


All I Want for Christmas is Normality

by Cyber Moggy (janet_mayfire)



Category: Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-30
Updated: 2010-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-11 08:50:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janet_mayfire/pseuds/Cyber%20Moggy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard's a faun. Jeremy is a giant. James is, somehow, normal. They don't know why this is, nor do they know how to reboot reality. But they'd better figure it out, and fast, because otherwise the world's going to turn into crack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mary approached the garage with trepidation. She was a good Christian girl, and she had heard stories about the mechanic who worked there. She and her friends giggled about Richard, and whispered mysterious things to eachother about fur. She didn't really understand what they were saying, and she had a feeling that her friends didn't really understand either – she knew them, and she knew their parents, and their parents all knew eachother. They were all good churchgoing folk, who were careful to keep their daughters as innocent as possible.

 

All she really knew was that humans weren't supposed to have horns. The other mechanics in town were all perfectly normal human beings. Their legs were no hairier than the legs of any other man (or so Michelle said, and she was Loose and would therefore know what she was talking about. Well – that's what Mary's Mum said, anyway). They were louts, of course, but they were normal.

 

She had to go there. The family car had broken down, and had been taken to the garage to be fixed. Her dad had got a call from the garage saying that it was ready, and her dad had asked her to go and pick it up for him, because he was busy at his work and couldn't get there. Why her dad had had to take his car to the only garage in the village staffed by a mythological being was beyond her.

 

It would be alright if it was Jeremy who was there. He was a perfectly normal human being. But what if it was Richard who saw her instead?

 

She squared her shoulders. She would not run away. She was a good English Christian girl and God was there to protect her. If she met Richard, she would be polite and request the car. She was wearing her girdle, and her crucifix. He would not be able to get past them.

 

The garage was open. Naturally. It was two thirty in the afternoon. It was normal for the garage to be open at two thirty in the afternoon. All the shops were open at two thirty in the afternoon. In fact, they were all lined up in front of her. The draper's, the cafe, the grocer's, the garage, the hardware store, and the pharmacy. One after the other.

 

Except that the other shops all had glass fronts and doors and were brightly lit. The garage was a gaping, open mouth, the blackness broken only by a mysterious bluish glow toward the rear of the workshop. She felt that it should have a sign over it, saying 'abandon all hope'.

 

Why did they have to keep it so dark in there? It really didn't help matters at all, and she suspected that it didn't do much to help Richard fix people's cars.

 

“Going to stand there all day, miss?”

 

Mary jumped, and looked around. She was standing on the pavement opposite the garage, and Mr May, the newspaperman, had wandered up.

 

“Is something wrong?”

 

“No!” she replied, more forcefully than she really intended. “Nothing's wrong. I just have to pick up my father's car. That's all.”

 

“Well, good day to you, miss,” he said, and went into the newspaper's office.

 

She strode purposefully forward into the garage.

 

“Good afternoon!” she called, and winced when she heard the waver in her voice.

 

“Good afternoon, miss,” said a male voice. “Can I help you?”

 

“I've come to pick up my Dad's car,” she said, firming herself. “Where are you?”

 

The speaker came forward. “Right here, miss. It's Mary Williams, isn't it?”

 

She peered into the darkness, barely able to distinguish more than a silhouette. The mechanic in front of her was barely as tall as she was, and she felt a shiver of dread pass through her. Terror in her heart, her gaze moved relentlessly up to his hair. Could she see...?

 

Yes. They were there. On his head. Horns.

 

Darkness raced forward and, before she could do anything about it, it claimed her.

 

=^0^=

 

Richard darted forward as Mary fainted, and caught her. He lifted her easily and carried her into the office abutting the garage. He deposited her on the couch and sat back on his hooves. The sorts of stories which circulated about fauns were really quite silly. He'd hoped that those stories by CS Lewis would clear things up a bit, but it hadn't worked for long. The tales about fauns being randy, sex-mad rutting machines always kept coming back.

 

Not that it made it difficult for him to get laid. A certain portion of the village's female population were practically lining up to tumble him. However, that certain portion of the village's female population were not the only ones who brought their cars to his garage for servicing.

 

He stood up and went back into the garage. Where the hell was Jeremy? They had an agreement. Richard did the mechanics, Jeremy dealt with the officework and the customers. That way, people would only have to deal with Richard if they wanted to, and the customers got their cars back with a minimum of fuss.

 

Footsteps at the entrance of the garage made him turn around. It was James from across the road. “Everything alright, is it?” he asked amiably.

 

“May!” Richard exclaimed. “Have you seen Jeremy anywhere?”

 

“Not since lunchtime. Why?”

 

“I've got Mary Williams in the main office – she's fainted, and it probably would be a good idea if I wasn't in view when she wakes up.”

 

James May rolled his eyes. “What on earth do they tell those girls about you?” he wondered. “Which car's hers?”

 

Richard pointed it out. “Her dad'll come and pay me later,” he said. “She's just got to drive it home.”

 

James nodded, and disappeared into the office. Richard watched from the garage as he knelt next to the couch. Evidently, Miss Williams was waking up again, because James was speaking quietly to her and offering her a cup of tea. Richard turned and walked to the very rear of the garage to have another look at the reason why the garage was so dark, despite having so many lights on.

 

It was a suit, of the kind that racing drivers wore when driving on the track. It had a helmet on top of it. Underneath its coating of slime, both helmet and suit were white. For some reason, the bluish glow it emitted seemed to cancel out most of the other light sources in the vicinity.

 

James had been wearing it when the accident had happened. It was why he remembered everything that had happened better than either Jeremy or Richard. Behind him, a car started, and Richard turned around again. Mary Williams had evidently made a full recovery from her fainting fit, and was now driving away. James was standing there, watching. “Poor girl,” James said sympathetically.

 

“What's poor about her?” Richard snorted. “Her father's one of the wealthiest businessmen in the village.”

 

“She was affected by the explosion too, you know,” James reminded him. “The whole village was.”

 

“Really?” Richard asked in surprise. “What was here before?”

 

James shrugged. “A perfectly normal English village not far from the Top Gear track. Mary Williams was a perfectly normal middle class girl with a boyfriend, who wore perfectly normal trendy outfits, and did perfectly normal teenaged things. Now? She looks, thinks, and behaves like Janet Weiss. And her friends are the same.”

 

“I don't remember a village ever being here before.”

 

“That's because you used to come from the opposite direction,” James replied patiently.

 

“But surely I'd have known!” Richard protested.

 

“There's a lot you don't remember, you know.”

 

Richard sighed, and sat down on the bonnet of a Ford that had been brought in for radiator repairs. There was, indeed, an awful lot he didn't remember. Intellectually, he knew that he'd lived on a hobby farm with a wife, two children, and a motley collection of animals and vehicles. But he couldn't remember what any of them looked like. He had a few hazy memories of having worked in television, but the clearest memory he had there was of him sitting in a makeup artist's chair staring at his own reflection whilst a makeup lady fluttered around him with powder puffs and eyeliner and stuff.

 

He couldn't remember her name, or the names of their two daughters. James had told him a couple of times, but for some reason the knowledge would not remain in his memory. The names just slithered out again.

 

He missed them dreadfully.

 

With a sigh, he got to his feet, opened up the Ford, and started poking about. “Thanks for dealing with Mary, James!” he said.

 

“Not a problem,” James replied. “I'll see you later.”

 

Richard waved at him, and turned his full attention to the car. He was still poking about in it, desperately trying to distract himself from the loneliness that thoughts of his mysterious wife and daughters always brought on when a clatter of sensible heels brought his head up and out of the car again.

 

Wriggling out from within the Ford, he saw that Mary had come in again. She was somewhat wild-eyed, and looked a bit as though she'd been running.

 

“Why am I like this?” she demanded, eyes flashing with anger.

 

“What do you mean?” Richard asked.

 

“Like a...a 1950's school girl! My dad would never have trusted me to back his car down the driveway before this, let alone ask me to pick it up from the garage!”

 

Richard frowned thoughtfully. “I was wondering if people would notice anything amiss,” he said. “Why do you think I know what's going on?”

 

“Because fauns were never real before this! It has to be you!”

 

“Come into the office,” he said, and led the way. “I'm glad to see you're over your fainting fit,” he added.

 

Mary followed him into the office, and dropped ungracefully onto the couch. “I still don't know why I fainted,” she said. “I've never done anything like that before in my life!”

 

“Really?” said a voice from the doorway. Calling the voice 'big' did not do it justice. Calling it 'huge' was closer, although 'gigantic' was probably the best description.

 

Somehow, the person the voice belonged to was gigantic, also. Or, at least, was well on his way to becoming so. He filled the doorway, and when he walked through it, he filled the room, too.

 

It wasn't until he stopped talking, and you tried to ignore his giant personality, that you realised that he really wasn't much larger than a normal human. He stood a good head taller than everybody else in the room, but physically he was only human.

 

His personality, on the other hand, was that of a giant. He radiated largeness. When he was in a room, everybody else started to feel claustrophobic.

 

Except, apparently, Richard.

 

“And where have you been, Clarkson?” Richard demanded, putting his hands on his hips.

 

“Investigating,” Jeremy replied, coming in and sitting on a chair.

 

“And I'd rather like to hear what this young lady has to say,” Jeremy added.

 

Mary frowned, gathering her thoughts together. “A few weeks ago, I had a furious argument with my father over my learning to drive. I wanted to learn, so that I could go to London and...and...” She fell silent, struggling to remember.

 

“Gain a career?” Jeremy suggested softly. “Escape from village life?”

 

She leaned back on the couch. “I don't remember. All I can remember was that it felt vitally important for me to learn to drive.”

 

“I take it your father didn't agree?” Richard asked.

 

Mary nodded. “Except that now, I can remember him giving me driving lessons. I'm sure he never did that! Except that I just drove home. How could I have driven home alone when I've never had any driving lessons before?”

 

“Where have you been, Jeremy?” Richard asked, repeating his earlier question.

 

“Let me get James, first,” Jeremy said, and disappeared out the door. Mary and Richard watched him cross the road in silence. They could hear the ring of the cash registers coming from next door through the thin walls and, in the distance, the rumble of traffic through the town.

 

“Is he getting taller?” she asked.

 

“No,” Richard replied. “It just seems like it sometimes.”

 

They waited in silence. Mary, apparently, had overcome the initial shyness and fear that had plagued her earlier interaction with Richard, and that made Richard wonder if perhaps a little mental self-control was, indeed, enough to counteract the changes that had taken place. Now, she was starting to give Richard the same lustful looks that the other ladies of the village normally gave him.

 

She bit her lip, and frowned. Richard watched as she wrestled with her conscience and her personality. “What's happening to me?” she asked.

 

“I don't know,” he replied. “But it's happening to me, too. I'm supposed to be human, but I keep wanting to run into the forest and never come out.”

 

“What caused this?”

 

“There was an accident,” he replied, “An explosion. I don't really remember it too well. But after the smoke blew away, we were all standing here, in this garage. And I wasn't human any more.”

 

“What blew up?” she asked.

 

Richard shrugged. “I don't know. I hardly even remember what it used to be like, anymore.” He wrapped his arms around himself as the shadowy knowledge of his wife and daughters surfaced once more. “I...”

 

There was a crack, the sound of a head meeting a wooden frame, followed by the sound of swearing. Richard and Mary swung around to see Jeremy staggering around, clutching his forehead.

 

Richard frowned. “You were never too tall to fit through that door before!” he said.

 

“No,” Jeremy agreed, and swore some more.

 

“It's getting worse, isn't it?” James said, sitting down next to Mary.

 

Jeremy nodded. “It's spreading, too. It's got as far as the neighbouring towns.”

 

“What exploded, Jeremy?” Richard asked.

 

“I think it was a CRACK device,” Jeremy said grimly. “It must have been set to 'mythology.'”

 

Silence reigned as the three men stared at each other. They didn't know who or what was responsible for the devices, but they had been appearing more and more frequently. So far, they had managed to disarm most of them before they went off, but this one had made it under their radar.

 

“What's a crack device?” Mary asked, confused.

 

“It's an acronym,” Richard told her. “It stands for 'Covert Reality Alternating Cognitive Kerfuffle' device.”

 

“And they explode, do they?”

 

The three men all nodded. “Spreading weirdness all over everything that is within range.”

 

“How do we undo it?” Mary asked.

 

“We don't know,” James said. “We've never managed to figure it out.”


	2. All I Want for Christmas is Normality

Mary's hand flew to her mouth, and once again, the sound of next door's cash registers became the dominant sound in the office. Finally, she spoke up again. “I'm going to be like this forever!” she whimpered. Her voice began to rise. “I'm going to be a good little catholic school girl who can't even think of any future that doesn't involve being a good little babymaker for the rest of my life!”

 

“And living in a town with a population of mythological creatures,” Richard said gloomily. His vision was littered with imaginary crosses burning in front of the garage, punctuated by bible-bashing vicars denouncing him as the work of Satan. A lonely future, spent living in the garage with the seedy little one-bedroom apartment above it. No wife, no children, no animals, no open space. An urban forest instead of a real one.

 

They were all silent. None of them much liked the futures they each imagined for themselves.

 

Outside, the wind had sprung up, and was roaring down the street. It whistled into the garage, eddied around the cars, and set the obligatory calendar with the nearly naked girl on it fluttering to the ground.

 

The front door crashed open and banged shut again, torn out of the hands of the villager entering by the force of the gust. Naked fear wiped all previous reactions from Richard's mind in a single explosion of sound, leaving only an overpowering desire for sanctuary. He sprang to his hooves, and scanned the room – only one place presented itself as being in any way safe, and he made for it.

 

Dimly, Richard heard James grunt as he landed in his friend's lap and buried his face in his shoulder. Time seemed to slow down, and a sequence of noises that he was only able to interpret later impinged on his consciousness. Jeremy coming to his feet and knocking the chair over. The sound of the front counter bell ringing. Mary leaping out of the couch and following Jeremy through to the public area. Mary pleading with Jeremy to calm down and not do some serious damage to the newcomer for scaring Richard so badly.

 

Somebody had put their arms around him, and was stroking his hair and murmuring in his ear. Gradually, meaningless noises resolved themselves into speech – words only barely more meaningful than the soothing noises he'd heard before.

 

“It's alright,” the voice (James, his memory supplied) said quietly. “It's only a customer. There's nothing to be frightened of.”

 

Richard, still shaking from the shock of the sudden fright he'd received, breathed in deeply to try and calm himself down. The scent of warm, human flesh stung his abruptly sensitive nostrils, and he felt something stir within him. Warm flesh. Somehow...appealing. He turned his head into James' neck to smell it better.

 

In the distance, voices talked. A bewildered customer, trying to understand why the garage's office manager was suddenly so big and terrifying. An angry Jeremy, trying to stop himself from crash-tackling the newcomer for scaring his friend so badly. Voices that were a long way away. Voices that were not here.

 

Voices that didn't really matter. Not as much as this enticingly human scent. Without even thinking about what he was doing, he nuzzled James' neck.

 

James breathed in sharply as he felt Richard's lips brush his neck, and was turning his head towards Richard's face when realisation of what they were doing shot through them, and suddenly the two of them were on opposite sides of the room, staring at each other in shock.

 

“I...I...” Richard stammered. Then, he fled.

 

=^o^=

 

Mary and Jeremy returned to the back office. Jeremy had calmed down enough to take details from the customer about what he needed done to his car and apologise profusely, and the customer had recovered from the fright he'd received when Jeremy had come charging into the reception area with an expression like an angry bull.

 

“One of these years, I'm going to kill that bloody faun,” Jeremy grumbled to Mary. “They never tell you how flighty fauns can be, you know – they just paint you pictures of jolly looking creatures with horns and goats' legs that dance around and play pipes. They don't mention that they behave like frightened rabbits at any old startling noise, and can run even faster.”

 

“Speaking of whom,” Mary said, taking in the scene in front of her, “Where is he?”

 

Jeremy glanced around sharply. “Yes, James,” he said, “What's happened to him?”

 

James, who had been left standing stock still against the far wall, slumped. “He's in the garage somewhere,” he replied glumly. “I didn't see or hear him go further.”

 

Jeremy gave him a knowing look. “There's no point going after him, he'll only start running again if he sees us coming” he said. “He'll come out when he's ready.”

 

James sighed, nodded his agreement, and started filling the kettle.

 

“I don't understand,” Mary said, bewildered. “Surely he'd welcome you two.”

 

James' shoulders tightened, and Jeremy flapped his jaw a couple of times. Mary got the distinct impression that she had missed something, some vital piece of information.

 

“Richard was always pretty highly strung,” Jeremy said eventually, “even before he got turned into a faun.”

 

“It used to be fun, giving him some piece of bad news and watching him freak out,” James interjected.

 

“But now?” Jeremy went on, “Fauns are more animal than human, and his reactions are faun-like. If he gets a fright, like he did just now, then he'll go looking for cover. And he'll jump and run away over anything – even figments of his imagination, for hours afterwards.”

 

James started making a pot of tea. “We're terrified that he's going to head off into the forest one day,” he confessed. “If he does, that'll be the last we see of him, possibly ever.”

 

“There's got to be a way of reversing this,” Jeremy said. “There has to be!”

 

Silence reigned, which didn't break until James started pouring tea into mugs and passing them around. Mary sipped hers, and decided that it was possibly the best tea she'd ever tasted.

 

Then, she had an idea. “Perhaps Doctor Fisher could help?” Mary suggested excitedly. “He used to be the science teacher at school! He's retired now, but he's awfully clever! If anybody could figure it out, it's him!” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Everybody says he defected from the German government during the War because he didn't want them to have the Bomb.”

 

James and Jeremy looked at eachother. “It can't hurt to try,” Jeremy said dubiously. “God knows, we haven't got any other leads.”

 

James nodded his agreement. “Yes. But not until tomorrow,” he added. “It's nearly four and it'll take most of the rest of the evening to properly calm Richard down.”

 

“Four!” Mary exclaimed. “I'd better get home right away! Mummy will be very unhappy with me if I'm late for tea!”

 

She jumped up and left at a run, all thoughts of Richard left behind. It wasn't until after she had got home and had endured a mild scolding from her mother that she remembered him again. For a moment she felt guilty, but his friends looked like they knew what they were doing. They'd help him.

 

=^o^=

 

It was a good cupboard. The part of him that was human and intelligent railed and ranted at him for wanting to hide in it so badly over nothing worse than a slammed door, but the animal part of him didn't care for rants and scoldings. It wanted nothing more than a nice, dark, hidden little hole. Something that would wrap itself around him like a comforting blanked or a warm hug, and keep him cosy. The cupboard under the stairs was absolutely ideal for the job.

 

He heard footsteps outside, and experienced a mild dose of adrenaline which made him curl up even tighter.

 

“Richard? Are you okay?”

 

“Human. Hide,” said his animal instincts.

 

“James. Friend,” said his intelligent mind. “He knows where you hide, too.”

 

Out loud, Richard managed a croak.

 

The footsteps headed in his direction.

 

“Can I open the door?” James asked, just outside.

 

His nerves trembling, he managed not to curl up in an even tighter ball, and made an affirmative croak. Moments later, the door opened, and a hand rested lightly on his shoulder. “It's alright, mate,” James said gently. “There's nobody around.”

 

Richard felt his muscles relax slightly, and knew that he'd be able to move soon. More or less.

 

“If you were a cat, I'd pat you,” James commented, still using the most gentle tone of voice he could manage. “But the only bit that's showing is your head.”

 

“If you patted anything else with fur, I'd probably misinterpret,” Richard replied with a shaky smile, and relaxed a bit more. In a few more minutes, his muscles might even be willing to move again.

 

James reached out and ran his hand through Richard's hair. “Give you a few minutes, and you might decide to misinterpret anyway,” James said with a chuckle. “The odds are fairly high right now of you trying to get me into bed with you.”

 

“Is that a promise?” Richard asked slyly. His arms uncurled from his legs, and he turned his head into James' hand, like a cat encouraging further caresses.

 

“From me?” James asked, “Yes. From you?”

 

Richard laughed ruefully, and crawled out of the cupboard. “I doubt I'd be able to get it up right now,” he admitted.

 

“I figured as much,” James said, taking Richard's hands and drawing him towards his apartment. “Come on upstairs. You still might take fright in the night, and if you do, I want to be there.”

 

Richard looked around. The office was dark and the garage door was shut. “What time is it?” he asked.

 

“Nine,” James said, still leading him by the hand.

 

The odour of beef stewing in red wine drifted down the stairs, and Richard breathed in deep. His stomach grumbled, and James laughed.

 

“I thought you'd be hungry,” he said. “It's stew.”

 

“James, I love you,” Richard said with heartfelt gratitude.

 

James laughed. “The way to your heart has always been through your stomach,” he said. “Especially when you've got horns. Come on.”

 

Richard joyfully followed him up stairs.

 

Later, after they had eaten and cleaned up, Richard lay in James' arms. “I hate this,” he said. “This whole faun thing.”

 

“It's not much fun for the rest of us, either,” James admitted.

 

“It used to be that I'd get stuck into anybody who jumped out at me. But now? Now, give me a good fright, and I'm hiding in a cupboard. Me! Hiding in a cupboard!”

 

James kissed the top of his head, between his horns. “We'll figure it out,” he whispered. “Somehow.”

 

“I don't see how,” Richard replied gloomily. “The first time one of those Crack Bombs went off, it wore off after only a couple of hours. It's been days now!”

 

“We'll talk it through over breakfast,” James promised. “Mary suggested we go talk to her old science teacher, and we'll probably do that. It'll seem better in the morning.”

 

“What's a science teacher going to be able to tell us?” Richard demanded.

 

James grinned. “He shows signs of being a Rocky Horror Show character in disguise,” he replied. “If he is, he should be able to tell us how to reverse this.”

 

Richard frowned at him. “I thought the Crack device was set to Mythology. Rocky Horror isn't mythology.

 

James looked startled. “True. We also expected it to wear off after a couple of hours. It's the only reason we haven't tightened security around Top Gear.”

 

“Yes,” Richard agreed. “It's not too bad if it's only for a few hours. If it's going to start being permanent, though, we might have to get them do something about it.”

 

“So, anything could happen,” James summarised, absent-mindedly pulling Richard into a hug.

 

“Watch it!” Richard yelped as one of his horns came abruptly into contact with James' jaw. “I'm not a bloody teddy bear, you know!”

 

James yelped as well, and loosened his grip. “Sorry,” he said, rubbing his jaw.

 

Richard scowled at him. “You like me better like this, don't you?” he accused.

 

“Don't be silly, Hammond,” James snorted. “I'll admit, it's a relief to have you not picking fights with people all the time...”

 

“You do like me better like this,” Richard interrupted gloomily.

 

“...but it's a novelty,” James went on firmly, “and it wears off quickly. I prefer you when you're a pain in the arse.”

 

“Bullshit,” Richard snorted, and then yawned.

 

“Go to sleep,” James said, and started to hum a lullaby an Ancient Grecian Priestess of Bacchus had taught him the last time a crack bomb had exploded. Richard had heard him try it when everybody around him was human, but it only seemed to work on fauns. Fortunately.

 

“I'll get you for this,” Richard yawned indignantly as the spell took hold. The last thing he saw before he fell asleep was James, grinning at him.


	3. All I Want For Christmas Is Normality

Richard was humming as he attacked Mr Davidson's faulty shock absorbers. He felt well-rested, well-balanced, and refreshingly human. He still had horns and hooves, but they felt more like add-ons than essential parts of his anatomy this morning.

 

James had gone back to his apartment for a shower and a change of clothes before going to work, and even Jeremy had managed to walk through the door into his office without cracking his head on the door frame or even having to duck, meaning that he was back to being no more than twice as tall as the average human being. The average human being, of course, Richard. He snickered to himself at the thought.

 

None of them could even begin to pretend that everything was back to normal, but things felt as close to normal as it was possible for them to be.

 

Somewhere in the garage, a bird started singing loudly. Richard felt a thrill run through him at the sound. The birdsong reminded him of meadows full of flowers. The image of meadows and flowers was vivid, so vivid that he could practically smell them, and his hooves twitched, itching to go out and find a meadow to dance through.

 

Richard banished all thoughts of meadows, birds, and flowers from his mind with a mild dose of irritation, and concentrated fully on the shock absorbers. He had nearly finished with them, and it wouldn't do to get distracted this late in the job.

 

It was a difficult task, keeping the meadow at bay. It crept in at the edges of his awareness and curled around the engine parts as he worked on them, fragrant and sunny. He growled slightly, and pushed them away. It wasn't going to take much longer to do this.

 

As he finished up a few minutes later, he heard booted footsteps on the concrete. “Bloody hell!” Jeremy exclaimed. “Where did this lot come from?”

“What lot?” Richard asked from under the car.

 

“Come out and see!” Jeremy replied.

 

Richard slid out from under the car, sat up, and stopped. Every little crack in the concrete had sprouted plants. Yellow anenomes, delicately purple little speedwells, and the white, daisy-like mayweeds competed for space with marigolds, larkspur, and honeysuckle. Perched on a rear-vision mirror, the bird was still singing its heart out. Somehow, Richard even understood that it was looking for romance.

 

The plants curled around his imagination and out the edges into reality. Jasmine curled up around another of the cars he was working on, snarling it up in a way that part of him knew was going to be very difficult to remove without damaging the car in any way. But the part that cared was, at that moment, a very small one. As the jasmine burst into flower, he laughed with delight.

 

He scrambled to his feet and dashed upstairs. Feverishly, he rummaged in drawers until he found what he was looking for – the set of panpipes he'd made for himself a while back. Clutching them, he trotted downstairs again and started to play a cheerful melody. As he played, the plants grew still larger, and their fragrance even managed to overwhelm the garage's customary smell of oil and metal.

 

“It's going to take us ages to clear this little lot away,” Jeremy grumbled in the background, but Richard paid him no attention.

 

He did pay attention, however, when somebody in the doorway called out, “Er...hello!”

 

He stopped playing, and turned to see who it was. Vaguely, he recognised the man as being the editor of the local newspaper, and James' boss. He was peering around the garage, blinking bemusedly at the flowers and the faun playing to them. Richard vaguely recalled James saying that his name was Mike.

 

“Sorry to disturb you,” Mike went on, “but have either of you seen James this morning?”

 

Jeremy shook his head, and raised an eyebrow at Richard.

 

“Not since he left here at about 6.30 this morning,” Richard replied. “Said he wanted to shower and change before he went to work.”

 

“I thought he'd gone home after feeding you?” Jeremy asked.

 

Richard shook his head. “The rotten bastard hit me with a sleep song last night, and if you're under one of those, you sleep until the singer wakes you up again. He usually stays the night if he does one.”

 

Jeremy blinked. “When did he learn that?”

 

Richard shrugged. “Damned if I know. He says it only works on fauns, though, so everybody else is perfectly safe. Speaking of whom, didn't he show up this morning?”

 

“No, he didn't,” Mike replied.

 

“That's not like James,” Jeremy said.

 

“He's never been late for work before in his life,” Mike agreed. “He's never even missed a day of work. I hope nothing's happened to him.”

 

Jeremy and Richard exchanged glances.

 

“He was the normal one,” Richard said, disturbed. “I hope nothing has happened to change that.”

 

“I think we'd better go and find out, don't you?” Jeremy said.

 

As they headed out the door, the bird fluttered over and perched on one of Richard's horns.

 

When they arrived at James' house, there was no sign of life within. Richard and Mike exchanged glances as Jeremy clambered through a garden bed to a window and peered inside.

 

“He's in the kitchen,” Jeremy reported. “He's just standing there.”

 

“Does he look alright?”

 

Jeremy looked again. “He looks a bit...ill, really. Like he's lost a lot of weight all of a sudden.”

 

Richard rapped on the door. “James!” he shouted. “Are you there?”

 

Jeremy watched, and shook his head. “He didn't move.”

 

“Try the door,” Mike suggested.

 

Richard tried the door, and it swung open easily. He walked in. Sure enough, James was standing there at the kitchen counter, his hair covering his face. The kettle was emitting a small trail of steam, and he had a teapot in front of him, still unused. Next to the teapot there was an opened envelope. “James?” he asked, uncertainly.

 

James twitched.

 

And for some reason, his shirt wasn't hanging properly. Richard started to get a nasty premonition.

 

“That's not James,” Mike said uncertainly.

 

“Yes it is,” Jeremy replied with utter certainty.

 

“This is a woman,” Mike pointed out. “She has breasts, therefore she must be a woman.”

 

They looked.

 

Mike, they decided, was correct. This was, indeed, a woman. A woman in an advanced state of shock.

 

“James isn't a woman,” Jeremy said, abruptly sounding as uncertain as Mike.

 

Richard reached up and brushed the hair out of the woman's face.

 

Not-James jumped violently, and looked down at him. “R...Richard?” she stammered.

 

“Are you alright?” Richard asked gently.

 

She shook her head violently. “I got a letter,” she said, gesturing to the envelope.

 

“Um,” Richard said.

 

“Read it,” she said.

 

Richard picked up the envelope and pulled out the letter. “It's a drivers' licence renewal notice,” he said. “I don't get it.”

 

“Look at who it's addressed to,” Not-James said, a note of hysteria in her voice.

 

Richard looked at the address. Then he looked up. “We have got to reverse this whole crack thing,” he said, feeling slightly sick.

 

“Richard, are you going to explain?” Jeremy demanded.

 

“It's addressed to Ms J. May,” Richard replied, and put the letter down on the counter.

 

He reached up, grasped James by the shoulders, and gently moved her to one side. She hadn't, he noticed, lost any height in her sudden gender shift, although her shoulders weren't anywhere near as broad as they had been. They were trembling slightly, and he rubbed them lightly.

 

He turned back to the kitchen counter. Very carefully, deliberately, he warmed the teapot. Put the leaves in. Boiled the kettle again. Poured water into the teapot. Waited for it to steep.

 

Jolted out of her stupor, James started to pull teacups down from the cupboard, and arranged them on the coffee table in the lounge room.

 

Richard hunted around the kitchen until he uncovered a milk jug, the sugar bowl, and a tray. Arranged milk, sugar, and tea on the tray. Carried everything over to the lounge room as James pulled out a packet of biscuits and poured some onto a plate.

 

Jeremy and Mike stared at them. And then at each other.

 

“Tea,” Richard said, gesturing to the lounge room.

 

“Will you please explain what the hell is going on?” Jeremy demanded.

 

“Tea first,” James said firmly.

 

“Oh, good grief!” Jeremy groaned. “Come on,” he added to Mike. “We won't get any sense out of either of them until they've both got some tea inside them.”

 

“Look,” said Mike as tea was poured and passed around. “What's going on here anyway? How come you're a faun and half the town is behaving like something out of 1950s America?”

 

Richard explained about the crack device.

 

“Oh,” Mike replied, suddenly finding his cup of tea to be very interesting indeed. He took a sip. “This really is very good tea,” he commented. “I keep forgetting how much I like tea.”

 

“Look,” said Richard, “Isn't it obvious what has happened?”

 

Jeremy and Mike shook their heads at him.

 

“As far as the government is concerned, if something is in writing, then it happened. With me so far?”

 

“Yes,” Jeremy replied doubtfully.

 

“So, if they make a mistake whereby they think James is a woman, then logically he must be a woman.”

 

“That's stupid!” Jeremy burst out.

 

“Yes,” James agreed. “But it's happened anyway. The moment I touched the envelope, I felt it happen.” She took another sip of her tea, noticed that her hand was starting to shake, and put it down again. “I should have known something like this would happen! The government have always made that mistake! I've been trying to get them to change it for years now!”

 

Richard put his tea down and pulled her into his arms. She buried her face in the crook of his shoulder, and he felt her shaking. He held onto her until she stopped.

 

“One of the people in James' local used to work for some company that made painkillers,” he said to the others. “James once told me that this guy got really drunk one night and told them all about what it's like to work for a government regulated company, and what they think of paperwork.”

 

Jeremy and Mike looked at each other, horrified, as the full impact of what Richard was saying sunk in. “We're at the mercy of every single little government mistake,” Jeremy realised. “We're doomed.”

 

James pulled herself out of Richard's arms, and finished her tea. “Right,” she said briskly. “We are going to go visit this Fisher guy that Mary mentioned, and we are going to find out how to reverse the effects of the crack device.”

 

The others stared at her uncertainly. “Um, are you sure you're alright, James?” Mike asked.

 

“Alright?” James asked with a hysterical laugh. “I'm suddenly the wrong gender and you're asking if I'm alright? I'm not going to be alright for a long, long time, Mike.”

 

“I mean, shouldn't you be resting, or something?”

 

“What for?” James asked bluntly. “I'm perfectly healthy, physically, and the best way for me to help myself emotionally is to get to the bottom of this whole crack business and fix it! Besides which, Richard is still a faun, and Jeremy looks like he's been growing again.”

 

Jeremy blinked. “I'm not...” he began, but at that moment, several buttons popped off his shirt. Closely followed by several more. “I am,” he added, resigned. “So much for being the normal one.”

 

James and Richard exchanged looks. “Sorry, Jezza,” Richard said. “James was the normal one.”

 

James got to her feet, and started gathering teacups. The others headed for the door. “And where do you think you lot are going?” she asked sweetly.

 

“To find Professor Fisher,” Jeremy said patiently.

 

“Not until we've done the washing up, we're not.”

 


	4. All I Want for Christmas is Normality

On the pavement, James watched, arms folded, as his editor and Richard attempted to wedge Jeremy into the car. It wasn't working. Even Richard had to admit that it was a Richard-sized car. Even when Jeremy was his normal size, he barely fit into the thing. But now?

 

“You bought this thing on purpose!” A red-faced Jeremy was shouting as the two of them attempted to wedge him into it. “You bought it so that you could laugh at me not fitting into it!”

 

Richard rolled his eyes. “You could always walk back,” he suggested, abruptly getting bored with the game of Trying To Fit Jeremy Into A 1962 Opel Cadet.

 

Beside him, Mike staggered back to the grass and collapsed, chest heaving. “Editing a newspaper doesn't prepare you for this,” he wheezed.

 

Jeremy levered himself out of the car with an audible 'pop' and straightened up. He stretched, and several muscles crackled up and down his spine. He looked at the car, and then down the road. He sighed. “I may have to,” he said. “I'm not going to fit in that thing. Why the hell did you decide to buy that thing anyway?”

 

A dreamy expression crossed Richard's face. “Our eyes met across a crowded car yard,” he said with a happy sigh, memories of his first meeting with the little car in that car yard in Botswana, and their subsequent adventures together, welling to the surface. Amongst his dearest memories was the memory of going to the docks to pick the car up off the ship from Africa.

 

“You could always sit on the roof,” James suggested.

 

“No!” Jeremy and Richard both said emphatically.

 

“Not the way he drives!” Jeremy added.

 

“You'd squash him!” Richard protested. “He's only little!”

 

Jeremy stared at him. “He?” he asked. “Little? It's just a car, Richard. An automotive device. It doesn't have a personality, and it doesn't have a soul!”

 

There was a beep from the car, and everybody jumped. A peculiar expression crossed James' face, but vanished again.

 

“And there's no call for leaning on the horn like that,” Jeremy added.

 

“I am not leaning on the horn!” Richard protested indignantly. “I'm not even in the car, in case you hadn't noticed!”

 

Jeremy scowled blackly. “No,” he said. “I refuse to believe that that car is sentient.”

 

“Then don't,” Richard growled.

 

“Oh, for gods sake!” James snapped. “That's enough, the pair of you!”

 

Jeremy straightened his shoulders with dignity, and started back to the garage. As a familiar looking Suzuki Vitara with pink writing on it came into view and cruised slowly past, however, he took the time to give it a one-fingered salute.

 

Richard pulled a face as it went past. The local seargent of police had never been terribly fond of them. Fortunately for them, however, he was a man of very little imagination, and at that point in time couldn't think of a sensible reason to stop. The Vitara soon turned a corner and was gone.

 

Just as well, really, given that his actually getting out of the car would almost certainly have resulted in a punch up. Just like it seemed to do almost every time he ran into the boys.

 

Putting the man out of his mind, he herded Mike and James into the car, and headed back to the garage, where Mary was waiting for them.

 

“I'd better get back to the office,” Mike said. “James, come in when you feel up to it.”

 

James nodded, and they watched as Mike headed back to the newspaper's office. James and Richard turned to face Mary, who hadn't said a word.

 

Her jaw was flapping uselessly on her face as she stared at them. Finally, however, she got her vocal chords working again. “I got here to find a garage full of flowers and birds, and no sign of anybody,” she said. “James? What happened?”

 

James flapped her own jaw a couple of times. “You explain,” she said to Richard. “I need another cup of tea.”

 

She disappeared into the office, and Richard quickly explained what they had discovered about government mistakes. Mary stared at him for a long moment before she said, “Do you think he'll make enough tea for two?”

 

Richard grinned, and ushered her into the office.

 

“What about the flowers?” Mary added.

 

Richard looked sheepish. “Ah. Those are, well, my fault, really.”

 

Mary raised her eyebrows at him. “How?”

“I'm a faun,” he said with a shrug.

 

“I think I'm missing the point here,” she said.

 

“Fauns are mythological creatures,” James reminded her from by the sink. “They exist in a world of magic. They are also heavily associated with meadows full of flowers. And this particular faun rather likes meadows full of flowers. Therefore, he brings them with him. So to speak.”

“What's wrong with meadows full of flowers?” Richard protested.

 

“Well, nothing, per se. It's just that landlords and producers get a trifle upset when they have to spend a week after a crack bomb has gone off clearing flowers out of every building you've been in.”

 

Mary stared at them both. “Everywhere he goes?” she asked, sounding a trifle faint.

 

“Everywhere,” James confirmed. “And, unfortunately, his particular brand of magic is stronger than your average weedkiller.”

 

Mary wavered slightly, and Richard darted across the room just in time to catch her as she fainted. He deposited her on the couch and lightly slapped her cheeks in an attempt to wake her up again. “James, if you turn out to be a fainter, I'm not going to catch you.”

 

Mary stayed stubbornly unconscious. Richard shrugged, put a cushion behind her head, and left her there.

 

James pouted at him. “Aww. I was hoping that you'd catch me in your brawny arms and carry me away to your perfumed bower!”

 

Richard pulled his pipes out of his pocket and tootled a little tune. Forest vines wound their way through his imagination, and tangled themselves around James legs and torso. “Is that a request?” he asked slyly, dragging the vines gently towards him.

 

James took a couple of reluctant steps forward, desire written across her face. “We have company in here, Hammond,” she said.

 

Richard tootled on his pipes again, and the pot plant behind James burst enthusiastically into flower. Richard pranced over to the flower pot, still playing, leaving James rooted to the spot. He plucked a flower and danced back to James, twirling the flower between his fingers.

 

He brushed it against her cheek, and she closed her eyes. Her lips parted as she caught her breath, and an odd expression crossed her face. His hand trailed up her cheek, and he tucked the flower in behind her ear.

 

Abruptly, the vines running through his imagination broke, and the pipes squawked in protest as James broke free of them. She took several stumbling steps forward and caught Richard around the waist in an effort to stop herself from losing her balance. The pair of them staggered backwards and tumbled into a chair.

 

Richard's pipes hit the floor as he grasped her shoulders (too narrow, he found himself thinking) in an effort to stop himself from falling any further, and found himself nose to nose with James.

 

She licked her lips nervously, and they parted invitingly again.

 

“How did you break my charm?” Richard asked hoarsely.

 

“The priestess who taught me the sleep spell taught me a few other things, too,” she replied with a faint smirk.

 

Richard eased himself closer to her. “What else did she teach you?” he whispered.

 

Before James could answer, or Richard could kiss her, Mary moaned slightly, and woke up.

 

“Did I just faint?” she asked woozily as Richard reluctantly climbed off James.

 

“Yes,” Richard said, coming over to help her sit up.

 

She groaned and closed her eyes again. “This really needs to be stopped, you know,” she said. “I hate myself like this.”

 

“Well, if you'll tell us where we can find this Professor Fisher of yours,” Richard said, “We'll do our best to undo this whole mess.”

 

She nodded, looking suddenly sheepish. “I'm being terribly self-centred, aren't I?” She bit her lip. Then, before either of the others could say anything, she went on, “I'm a failure. I can't bring myself to help properly because...well, Dad actually likes and respects me for the first time since I became a teenager. But...”

 

“It's alright,” James said, coming over and sitting next to her. “The cost is a bit high, isn't it?”

 

She nodded. “I wanted a career. Dad was always a bit old fashioned before, but he used to talk about what I was planning to do with my life. You know? How I was going to make a living? He used to talk about how accountancy was a good, solid career. But now, all he talks about is my meeting a nice boy with good prospects.”

 

James nodded. “You thought accountancy was dull?”

 

“Yeah. Really dull. But it's better than him talking about nice boys.”

 

Richard picked up his pipes and sat down in the chair James had vacated. “Do you know what you want to do with the rest of your life?” he asked gently.

 

She shook her head miserably. “No. That's the thing – Dad was right. I didn't have a clue. I'd never even thought about it.”

 

“What about now?”

 

“I still don't know!” she wailed. “I went to see the careers people recently, and they've been turned into fifties stereotypes too! They're all 'you'll have lots of babies, and you won't want to worry about nasty old jobs then.'”

 

Richard and James looked at each other.

 

She pulled herself together. “Mum's expecting me at home, and there'll be a scene if I don't show up. Professor Fisher lives in this big old mansion out in the forest. You go out past the Dunsfold Aerodrome, and keep going past until you come across a lane into the forest. The mansion is at the end of the lane.” She got to her feet, fished out her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes. “I'm sorry,” she said, “I really am.” Then, she left.

 

James and Richard looked at each other. “I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore,” James commented. “It was bad enough at the time.”

 

Richard laughed. “Speak for yourself!” he said. “I have fond memories of my teenaged years.”

 

“I took myself too seriously for that,” James admitted ruefully.

 

Richard sobered at the thought. “I'm going to have to deal with teenaged daughters in a few years,” he said. “I may not be able to remember their faces, but I know that everything will change when they hit puberty.”

 

“Maybe they won't be so bad,” James suggested.

 

“I have very clear memories of Jeremy's kids, thank you very much,” Richard said. “And they were lovely kids until they hit puberty. And probably will be again when their hormones settle down again.”

 

There was a loud 'crack' from the front of the shop, and Jeremy stumbled in, swearing. He was clutching his forehead with one hand, and his trousers with the other.

 

Jeremy had grown some more on his walk back, and not just in height. Whilst still in proportion, his middle was distinctly thicker than it had been – and his jeans didn't fit any more. Several seams had split, and he'd been forced to undo them. The only thing that saved his torso from similar indignities was that his favourite kind of shirt was a comfortably loose polo shirt, which had considerably more give to it than his jeans did.

 

The shirt he'd had done up over the top of the polo shirt was torn across the back where his shoulders had broadened further than the shirt was designed for. Richard, seeing that, was instantly hit with a nostalgic desire to see James' broad shoulders back where they belonged.

 

At that moment, Jeremy obviously decided that his head hurt far more than his dignity did, and let go of his trousers to clutch his head with both hands. His jeans promptly fell down, and, half a step later, so did he.

 

Once he'd stopped swearing, he sat up. “We've got to reverse this whole crack thing,” he said grimly.

 

“Mary told us where we can find Professor Fisher,” James volunteered.

 

“Now that you're here, we can get going,” Richard agreed.

 

“Not like this, I can't,” Jeremy contradicted. “Besides, the only car we have available right now is the Opal. And we've already tried fitting me in that thing once.”

 

“So what do we do?” James asked.

 

“Leave him behind,” Richard said flatly. “We need to get this situation fixed, and now.”

 

Jeremy nodded his agreement. “Go on. You two are quite capable of describing this to him without any help from me.”


	5. All I Want for Christmas is Normality

“Well, this must be the turnoff that Mary mentioned,” Richard said, slowing the car as they approached the entrance to the forest.

 

It was a narrow road, and he was glad he'd come in Oliver, instead of something that Jeremy would have fit into. As he turned onto the road, he realised that it was so narrow that, if he didn't have anywhere to turn at the other end, he'd have to back the car out. Not that somebody living in a place like this would fail to have somewhere to turn vehicles around, as this was so narrow even a horse would probably have a hard time of it.

 

“Tight fit,” James commented as they turned onto the road.

 

It wasn't even a road, Richard decided, even though it looked as though it had been quite well constructed. It was barely even a track.

 

The car hit a pothole, and Richard winced. Then, Oliver twisted slightly, and James braced herself against the dashboard. Richard, whose knuckles were turning white as he clutched the steering wheel, was thrown sideways against her.

 

“I didn't think the road was that bad!” James panted as Richard slammed his foot onto the brakes.

 

Richard looked over his shoulder at the stretch of road they'd just gone down. It was dead straight, and didn't have a single pot hole in it. He turned and looked at James. “That's weird,” he said.

 

She stared at him. Then, without warning, she laughed.

 

“What?”

 

“Do you realise,” she said, “that that is the first time any of us have said that since the crack bomb went off?”

 

Richard blinked. “It can't be!”

 

“Seriously,” James replied. “I've never said it, and I've never heard you or Jeremy say it before, either.”

 

They looked at each other.

 

She was absolutely right. Not once had any of them said anything about weirdness until now. What, he wondered, did that say about them? Were they all so used to him being turned into a faun at the drop of a crack device that none of them really noticed any more? Even he hadn't done more than shrug when he'd run his hand through his hair and discovered that he had horns. Again.

 

And how come James' gender switch wasn't bothering him at all? In fact, he'd almost forgotten that she used to be male. He glanced over at her, and decided that James had lovely eyes. Then, he shook himself. He'd almost forgotten what it was like to be properly human. He frowned. The ease with which he could forget what it was like to be human was possibly the most disturbing aspect of all.

 

He firmly banished the thought from his mind and turned back to the road ahead. It didn't look inviting. And he could almost feel Oliver's reluctance to keep going. “Come on,” he said, putting the car into gear and releasing the handbrake. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we can get out again.”

 

He let up the clutch, and the car promptly went backwards.

 

“I get the distinct impression that Oliver doesn't want to go down this track,” James said conversationally.

 

“I think you're right,” Richard agreed calmly.

 

“I also think that perhaps Oliver's been affected by the crack bomb,” James went on.

 

Richard nodded slowly. “That makes sense,” he replied.

 

“And I'm wondering if Oliver enjoys being a car? Because if he doesn't, then the best thing he can do for himself is to take us willingly down this track.”

 

Silence reigned for several long moments. Then, Oliver's engine started purring, and he trundled forward at a gentle pace. Richard frowned again. He hadn't even put the car into gear again, let alone put his foot on the accelerator.

 

“So,” Richard said conversationally. “What makes you think that Oliver hasn't simply grown a soul?”

 

“Because,” James replied, “I've been wondering where the Stig has been lately.”

 

Richard's jaw dropped. “The Stig has been ill,” he replied. “That's why you were wearing the suit when the bomb went off.”

 

“Sure,” James agreed. “And Stig isn't human, either, which is why he never appears in public without his helmet on. But he's never been ill for more than a day. Even that time in Africa when he caught Ebola, it only took him twenty four hours to shake it off again. He's got an immune system like a Sherman tank. So, where is he? Where has he been? He should have resurfaced by now.”

 

Oliver started to speed up.

 

“He really doesn't like this forest,” Richard commented.

 

James frowned. “Why not? I mean, it's pretty dense, but it's not that bad, surely?”

  
Richard frowned, too. He was starting to get an odd, prickly sort of feeling. A suspicion that something was really quite seriously wrong with the place. Something out of sight. “Actually, it feels a bit...wrong,” he said. “I don't suppose that priestess of yours taught you anything about this?”

 

James shook her head. “Most of what she taught me were spells making sure that I didn't get ravished by horny fauns against my will.”

 

Richard went very still. “Against your will?”

 

She winced. “Sorry – that isn't quite the right way of putting it. It's more...I'm not intending to let myself be ravished by you. But you're absolutely intoxicating when you're playing those pipes. All thoughts of saying no fly out the window when you start playing them.”

 

He raised his eyebrows. “You like it?”

 

She sighed and rubbed her forehead. He got the distinct feeling that she needed to tell him something that he wasn't going to want to hear. “Not always. Sometimes it's fun, but mostly it's just...overwhelming.”

 

“Even when you were male?”

 

She nodded. “Even then.”

 

“You'd rather I was human?”

 

“Yes,” she replied bluntly.

 

He stared ahead at the track for a while, ashen-faced. “How do I handle this?” he wondered aloud. “I don't even really understand it.”

 

She put her hand on his knee and squeezed it gently. “I did some reading after the last time. About fauns.”

 

“Useful reading?”

 

“Some. Lots of stuff about fauns – or satyrs, rather – and how they are fertility spirits.” James started rambling on about the mythology of satyrs, and Richard's eyes started to glaze over. At some point, she veered off mythology completely and launched into a somewhat disjointed lecture on Freudian symbolism, and at that point, Richard lost track of what she was on about completely. But then, he often did when James slipped into lecture mode, and it was something of a relief to discover that that aspect of her personality had not changed when her gender had.

 

As he drove, thoughts of his suddenly-nonexistent family warred for his attention with thoughts of the woman sitting beside him. Did she know how lovely she was? “If we undo all this, I'll lose you,” he said.

 

She turned sharply to face him. “Richard...”

 

“I...” He took his foot off the accelerator and went to stamp on the breaks – but at that moment, Oliver wrenched the steering wheel out of his hands and ignored all instructions Richard attempted to give him.

 

“Stig never really appreciated being given orders,” James commented.

 

Richard chuckled. “Alright,” he said. “You win, Oliver. You drive.”

 

Oliver beeped an affirmative, and Richard stopped trying to wrestle for control of the steering wheel. He leaned back in his seat and stared out the window instead. Thoughts of his wife and children swam through his mind, still locked in fierce battle with thoughts of James, and a feeling of apprehension passed through him.

 

Somehow, he felt, he had to try to remember that James was supposed to be male, and what he was supposed to look like. It seemed as though if he could remember that, then he could remember his wife and children. He'd be able to get them back again.

 

He pulled his pipes out of his pocket. He could think of a melody that might help. Perhaps some flowers would help things, too. This forest would brighten up a great deal if it had a few wild flowers twisting through it. He started to play, imagining the track they were driving along lined with flowers. Most of the forest would be too dark, but the track got some sunlight, so they should survive quite well.

 

Now that he thought about it, the forest did look dark. Far darker than was really normal. The trees, he realised, were growing very close together. So close that it would be difficult to pick a path through them, if they happened to be on foot.

 

And that vague, prickly feeling he had had before he had allowed himself to be distracted by thoughts of James and his wife abruptly blossomed into full blown terror. He was in a confined space, and he was trapped. He couldn't even hug James.

 

But the claustrophobia was being forced on him. He wasn't sure how he knew that, but know it he did. It wasn't his own terror – it was the forest working on him. He started to play his pipes in an effort to counter the effects of the forest.

 

The backlash that hit him the moment the magic started to spread, however, threw him back against the headrest of his seat with a cry of pain and sent the pipes flying onto the back seat. Everything grew dark, and it took him a moment to realise that he wasn't blacking out.

 

“What the...?” he heard James ask.

 

Oliver switched on his headlights, and Richard realised that the trees were actually drawing their branches closer together above their heads to block out the sunlight and prevent his magic from taking hold.

 

He stamped his foot on the brakes automatically, and he could feel Oliver screech to a halt. Evidently, Oliver agreed with his riders. But when Richard looked over his shoulders, he realised that he couldn't see the start of the road any more.

 

“We haven't come that far,” James said quietly, “and the track has been dead straight.”

 

Behind the car, they could see the forest pulling together to keep them inside.

 

Oliver must have sensed the forest beginning to close in on them, because he leapt ahead at a frantic pace.

 

“We shouldn't have come,” James said. “We really should have stayed at home.”

 

Richard's first instinct was to agree with her. But common sense soon kicked in. “Well, perhaps,” he said. “But if we had, nothing would have changed.”

 

“We don't know that.”

 

But then, Oliver screeched to a halt, and squealed around a corner that threw Richard into James' lap. Then, they were stopped, and they were parked in a very familiar garage with a very familiar white suit glowing faintly in front of them.

 

“Would somebody please tell me where all those trees came from?” Jeremy said, coming out of the office.


	6. All I Want for Christmas is Normality

“We didn't go that far,” Richard said, looking around wildly. “We didn't! And the forest didn't extend as far as the town anyway!”

 

He didn't miss the glance that James and Jeremy exchanged, and tried to reign in his rising panic. There was nowhere he could run to, so there was no point in panicking. He started taking long, slow breaths in an effort to settle himself down again.

 

“I'd say somebody's hit a big, fat reset button,” Jeremy said grimly. “God knows what's hidden out there.”

 

Richard tottered over to the nearest steady object, which happened to be Oliver, and leaned on it. “What are the rules here?” he asked. “There were rules before – what are they now?”

 

His breath felt short in his lungs, and he felt himself panting. He pulled open Oliver's back door and started groping for his pipes. A little music would be bound to help.

 

The pipes weren't there. The panic started to rise again. “No!” he cried. James and Jeremy rushed over.

 

“His pipes are in the car somewhere. Find them,” Richard heard James order Jeremy, and then he felt her arms wrap around him and pull him out. “Jeremy will find them,” James said in her most soothing voice. “It's alright.”

 

James was normally quite good at settling him down. There was something about her relaxed attitude towards life which reminded him that things were never that bad. And now she was doing her best. It wasn't going to be enough.

 

“We'll figure it out,” she said, stroking his back gently.

 

Richard wrapped his arms around her middle and buried his face in her shoulder. His innards felt as though they were coiling around themselves.

 

“What the hell?” he heard Jeremy ask.

“Did you find the pipes?” James asked him.

 

“No. Just this lute.”

 

Richard frowned, and pulled back enough to give James a funny look. Then his stomach cramped violently. Letting go of James, he stumbled backwards, clutching his middle. Another cramp hit him, and he doubled over with a scream, and fell over completely. He heard James cry out, and Jeremy call his name.

 

The light pulsed around him, and he had a suspicion that it wasn't an illusion caused by the waves of pain that were still washing over him, even though the pain seemed to pulse in the time with the light. Or was it the other way around?

 

He opened his eyes, and craned his head around to look at the Stig's uniform. Sure enough, the normally pale glow that seemed to suck the light out of everywhere else was now pulsing. He wasn't simply imagining it.

 

“Richard!” James exclaimed.

 

“I'm a little busy right now,” Richard panted as he curled up in a ball, “trying not to scream.”

 

“Your horns are shrinking!”

 

But another wave of pain hit him at that moment, and he didn't really hear.

 

“Is this what it feels like to give birth?” Richard asked after the latest wave passed through him.

 

“I have no idea,” James said, kneeling down beside him.

 

“Why not?” Richard asked. “You're a woman, aren't you?”

 

“Right now, yes,” James confirmed. In the background, Jeremy rolled his eyes. “But I don't have any children. Remember?”

 

“Um,” Jeremy said, his voice distant in the background, “Why is everything getting bigger?”

 

Another shockingly huge wave of pain crashed into him and Richard found that he didn't really care all that much about Jeremy's problems. His own were far too all-consuming.

 

“It's not getting bigger,” he heard James say as the pain subsided. “It's you that's getting smaller.”

 

The pain subsided, leaving only memories and aching muscles. He felt as though his entire digestive system, all of his internal organs, and every single muscle in his legs, had mysteriously decided to rearrange themselves. To make matters worse, his skin was prickling, and he had pains in his feet that he hadn't experienced since he was a teenager suffering from growing pains.

 

Gradually, the prickling subsided. Richard uncurled himself, and lay there on the floor. Every part of his body seemed to ache with the memory of what he had just experienced. He stared at the wheel in front of him whilst he tried to regain some capability – or even just the semblance of capability would have done – of actual thought.

 

Slowly, he sat up. Then, he realised that his toes were cold. Toes?

 

And hadn't James said something about his horns shrinking?

 

And what was that Jeremy had said earlier about a reset button?

 

Carefully, he ran his hands through his hair. No horns. Although he did have a suspicion that his hair was now considerably longer than it had been. He looked down at his feet. Toes. Not cloven hooves, but toes. And that was bare skin underneath his overalls, not fur. Somehow, too, his knees bent forward again, instead of back. He finished cataloguing the changes he had experienced, and came to a conclusion. Somehow, for some reason (or possibly, given the circumstances, not for any reason at all), he was human again.

 

He didn't want to get his hopes up. For the four of them to be back in the Top Gear studio, with or without audience members, would be fabulous. But, after several days of crack, why should it stop now? Going from an hour or two of admittedly amusing nonsense to several days of life as a mythological being was too big a jump to simply expect it to wear off, just like it had before. He looked around.

 

They were still in the garage. It was still illuminated mostly by light from the Stig's white overalls. There was still a forest full of enormous trees and impenetrable undergrowth outside, complete with what had become a simple cart track that now ran straight out from the front of the garage.

 

They were still living in Crack Land.

 

There was a lute sitting on top of Oliver. He looked into the back of the little car, and found no sign of the pipes – apparently the reset that had returned him to human had also changed everything that related to him as a faun. Which, basically, meant the pipes.

 

“What the hell is going on?” Jeremy asked, coming around the car. He was probably trouserless, Richard decided. He had been when they'd come back into the garage. Not that he needed them right now – his shirt hung down to his knees. And he looked, and sounded, decidedly cross.

 

Richard's jaw dropped, and he started to laugh hysterically. He leaned against Oliver for support, and was soon gasping for breath again.

 

“If the Stig turns into a donkey,” he heard James say grimly, “then something is going to get shot.”

 

Richard pulled himself together. Then, with great deliberation and a huge smirk, he patted Jeremy on the top of his head.

 

“What the hell happened?” Jeremy repeated. He was starting to sound distinctly annoyed. “Why the hell are you suddenly so tall?”

 

“It's not me who's tall, mate,” Richard said. “It's you who's short.”

 

“Short?” Jeremy asked, his face turning red. “I am not short. I am Jeremy Clarkson, and I am 6 foot 5. Short is not a word that would – could – ever be applied to me.”

 

“Well, I'd put your current height at about 4 foot, right now,” Richard grinned. “I'd say you've drawn the short straw this time.”

 

“Short straw?” Jeremy blinked.

 

“Well, I'd have put you at nearly 8 foot this morning,” James pointed out reasonably.

 

“Short straw?” Jeremy repeated.

 

Richard turned to Oliver. “Stig,” he said, “you still in there?”

 

Oliver beeped an affirmative.

 

“This is worse than Alice in bloody Wonderland!” Jeremy grumbled. “First I'm a giant, then I'm a bloody dwarf!” He kicked Oliver's tire in fury.

 

In retaliation, Oliver rolled back a bit. Right onto Jeremy's foot. Jeremy howled, and Oliver rolled off it again. Jeremy hopped around the garage, clutching his foot in agony and radiating anger.

 

Richard and James looked at eachother.

 

“It is something about being short?” James wondered. “He never used to get violent about things before.”

 

Richard, for his part, felt a little odd. He'd always looked up to Jeremy, and not just because of the whole height issue. But now, Jeremy was definitely behaving the way he had always wanted to. And he himself felt remarkably calm about his height, although it was quite peculiar not to be the shortest of the trio any more.

 

Or perhaps it was simply the fact that his feet were cold. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to put some shoes on.”

 

It suddenly occurred to him that, even if he would have to stand on a box to kiss James (who had lost none of his height in his gender shift), that Mindy had never minded his lack of height. In fact, she'd told him once that she was pleased he was so short – she'd never got a crick in the neck when they snogged.

 

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “James!” he shouted. “My wife's name is Mindy! And the kids are Izzy and Willow!”

 

James gave him a thumbs-up and an encouraging grin, before turning back to the task of soothing Jeremy.

 

He trotted upstairs to his apartment, narrowly avoiding cutting his feet on a random piece of metal as he went. He simply hoped that when he was changed back into a human, the change had thought to equip him with a pair of shoes. He hadn't needed them before – mythological creatures with cloven hooves had no need of shoes. Humans who worked as mechanics, however, needed some particularly sturdy shoes.

 

The fact that Jeremy's clothes hadn't changed when he had, however, didn't leave him with much hope that he would be provided with what he needed.

 

When he opened his wardrobe, however, he discovered that things had changed in there – and not necessarily for the better. There were shoes in there. Shoes with high heels and big fancy buckles on them. There weren't any trousers – just knee-length breeches. And stockings. There were boots, at least. They also had heels on them, but they weren't as ridiculous as the shoes.

 

The jackets and vests were worse than the shoes. They were made of satin and lace. They were covered in ribbons and bows and honest-to-god gemstones. The materials alone were worth a fortune. And they looked utterly ridiculous.

 

There were hats there. Hats with huge floppy brims. Hats that were also covered with satin and ribbons. He knew without having to look in his drawers that the shirts would all be big, white, ballooning things with lace on them.

 

He started to rummage through the clothes that had been made available to him for the plainest items he could lay his hands on. After he'd pulled on a shirt (poet shirt, ballooning, lacy cuffs, hung down to his knees) and the least jewel-encrusted pair of breeches he could locate, he tossed jackets and capes onto the bed.

 

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered, and brushed his hair out of his eyes. He abruptly realised that he didn't actually know what he looked like any more.

 

He stopped rummaging, and stood up. “Mirror...” he said thoughtfully.

 

“You called?” a deep voice asked. It came from behind the door. He closed his bedroom door to find that the mirror stuck to the back of it had developed a dark and swirly image with a face slap-bang in the centre of it.

 

“Why do I have a talking mirror?” Richard asked.

 

“I was a gift from your godfather, your highness,” the mirror replied. “Don't you remember?”

 

Richard closed his eyes. “That was more information than I really needed right now,” he said. “Could you please just let me see what I look like right now?”

 

“Yes, your highness,” the mirror said. The swirly darkness faded to reveal a reflection of his room.

 

Sure enough, his hair had grown. In fact, it hadn't been as long as that even when he was in his early twenties, and it had been suitably rebellious to have long hair. It tumbled in long waves over his shoulders and down his back. It showed signs of having been exceedingly well looked after. What was that band, back in the 70s, he wondered? Ah, yes. The Sweet. Glam rock. That was it. He looked like a glam rocker who was at his day job. If Mindy got to see him with a head of hair as sleek and shiny as this, she'd be jealous.

 

It looked ridiculous with the greasy overalls he was wearing. He pulled a face. He couldn't bear the thought of looking so bloody silly. He stripped off, and pulled on the plainest set of breeches, poet shirt, and doublet, that he could find.

 

Not that that solved the hair problem. His hair still looked more than a bit silly.

 

Looking around, he spotted a black velvet ribbon sitting on the dresser. It was, apparently, the only thing they had provided him with to tie his hair back. Surely, he thought, given the outfit, they should have given him something in pink satin, to go with the pink satin jacket he'd seen in the wardrobe. He shrugged, and tied his hair back out of his eyes with it.

 

He cast his eyes back over the stuff on the bed. He was damned if he could tell what their new set of rules was going to be, based on the clothes alone. Reluctantly, he pulled on a pair of stockings, and a plain pair of riding boots. The magic mirror, however, was a much clearer hint. Especially when taken with the dwarf downstairs. He simply hoped that nothing dreadful was going to happen to James. The fairytale prince outfit suggested rather strongly that James was going to be the leading lady this time around, and that meant something dreadful was going to happen. At least to one of them.

 

“Is there a sword around here?” he asked the mirror.

 

“Hanging up in the back of the wardrobe, your highness,” the mirror replied.

 

He rummaged around a bit, found the sword, and belted it on. Right. Now to go down and face the others. He trotted downstairs into the garage again.

 

Judging by Jeremy's shellshocked expression and bleeding shoulder, the fact that there was no sign of the tall, sexy woman James had turned into, and that several of the trees hemming them in looked decidedly scorched (and several more had even been ripped out and removed somehow, giving room for something very, very large to maneuver), something dreadful had happened to James.


	7. All I Want for Christmas is Normality

Richard stopped, halfway down the stairs, to take in the scene. An odd kind of buzzing filled his mind as he tried to process the changes. His knuckles turned white on the railing, and it was all he could do to stop himself from drawing his sword and mindlessly attacking the trees for getting between him and wherever James had been taken.

 

The changes were happening too fast for him to take them all in. This morning, he'd been a faun. Now he was the hero in a fairy story. He was almost certainly going to have to penetrate an impenetrable barrier. Probably climb glass towers. Very likely attack dragons.

 

“Richard,” Jeremy said hoarsely.

 

“Was it a dragon?” Richard heard himself ask.

 

Jeremy nodded.

 

“Was it loud?”

 

Jeremy nodded again. “I kept wondering why you didn't appear,” he said.

 

“I didn't hear it,” Richard said. Why...? Then the answer hit him. The mirror. It had to have been the magic mirror. He turned and ran back up the stairs to his bedroom. “What did you do?” he demanded.

 

“Your highness?” the mirror asked.

 

“Don't give me that 'highness' crap,” Richard snarled. “Why did you stop me from hearing the dragon?”

 

The mirror looked a little confused. “What dragon?” it asked. “I simply sound-proofed this room so that you would not be disturbed in your sleep.”

 

Richard took several deep breaths. Then he tried counting to ten.

 

He got to seven when Jeremy walked in. “What on earth are you doing?” Jeremy asked.

 

Richard waved at the mirror, and kept counting.

 

Jeremy looked at the mirror with raised eyebrows. “Doing fairy tales are we now?” he asked.

 

“Yes, sir,” the mirror responded.

 

“It sound proofed this room,” Richard said hoarsely. “That's why I didn't hear the dragon.”

 

“There was a dragon?” the mirror asked.

 

“Yes, you pillock!” Richard exploded. “There was a bloody dragon! It's princess-napped James!”

 

“Oh, dear!” the mirror clucked. “That's terribly naughty of it!”

 

Richard took several more deep breaths, and counted to ten again. “Is there anything useful you can tell me?” he asked through clenched teeth.

 

There was a brief flash of light, and Richard found himself surrounded by smoke. Plus...something else, too. For some reason, his body felt incredibly heavy. As though something was weighing it down. And he couldn't see, either.

 

“Your highness will need your armor if you are to battle against dragons,” the mirror said helpfully. Richard thought it sounded rather muffled.

 

He attempted to raise his arms to find out why he couldn't actually see anything – apart from a very narrow strip of light. It proved to be incredibly difficult, and more than he could actually manage. His arms felt as though they had been encased in iron.

 

Iron.

 

Armor.

 

The bloody mirror had put him in a suit of armor.

 

“Well, off you go, your highness!” the mirror said. “I'm sure the dragon will simply cower under a tree when he sees you coming!”

 

Deep breathing. Count to ten. It would have to work, given that he couldn't actually move.

 

“Get me out of the armor,” Richard said through clenched teeth.

 

“But you'll need some protection against the dragon!” the mirror wailed.

 

“I can't move, you idiot!” Richard shouted. “Fat lot of good I'll be against the dragon when I can't bloody move to attack it! It'll roast me in my can, and then it'll go looking for the nearest tin opener so that it can eat me at its leisure!”

 

The mirror sniffled. “Nobody appreciates me,” it said.

 

Richard heard something scrabbling around his armor. “If I've got mice in here with me, you'll be doing a lot more than just sniffling, mate,” he warned.

 

“Calm down, Richard,” Jeremy said. “I'm just trying to unbuckle you.”

 

The mirror burst into tears.

 

Richard closed his eyes and counted to ten again. This was just like trying to deal with his daughters when they were being juvenile. His eyes sprang open. “Mirror,” he said, “How old are you?”

 

The mirror sniffled. “Ten,” it said.

 

Jeremy managed to haul Richard's helmet off, and they looked at each other. “I see,” Richard said quietly.

 

“You didn't know?” Jeremy asked him quietly.

 

Richard shook his head. “No. It was just a magic mirror that had appeared, as of this morning, in my bedroom.” A ten year old had apparently been turned into a mirror. Richard just hoped that it wasn't one of his daughters. Or, for that matter, one of Jeremy's offspring. “Mirror, what's your name?”

 

“Mark,” the mirror said in a small voice.

 

Not one of theirs, then. Somebody else's child. Thank heaven for small mercies.

 

“Mark,” Richard said, “This armor is so heavy that I can't move. And if I'm to find the princess, I need to be able to move.”

 

“But you could get hurt!” Mark wailed.

 

“I will probably get hurt anyway,” Richard replied. “If I can't move, I won't be able to get out of the way of danger when it happens. And that could get me killed.”

 

Mark thought about it for a while. “Okay,” he said, sounding small again. The armor vanished.

 

Freed from the armor, Richard staggered backwards until he fell onto his bed. He closed his eyes whilst he tried to catch his breath, and resisted the urge to swear. Remember Vocal Rule Number 1, he thought. Do not swear in front of cameras and children.

 

He sat up.

 

“Richard,” Jeremy said, an odd note in his voice. “What's up with your hair.”

 

“My hair?” Richard said in alarm. “Mark, let me see my own image, please?”

 

Obligingly, Mark's image dissolved and turned into a conventional mirror. Richard peered at himself, but then relaxed. There was nothing wrong. It was still perfect. “What's up with it?” he asked Jeremy.

 

“Your hair has been under a helmet, and just now was lying on a bed. Why isn't it messy?”

 

“What?” Richard asked, startled, and went to look in the mirror again. Jeremy was right. His hair should have shown some signs of messiness by now. It didn't have anything in it to keep it looking as smooth and shiny as a shampoo model's hair. But perfect it was. It was as smooth as silk. If he turned his head just right, light reflected off it brightly enough to blind any unfortunate casual onlooker. Even the velvet ribbon was still doing its job perfectly. Not a hair was out of place.

 

He shrugged it off. He had more important things to worry about right at that moment than the state of his hair. Such as finding James. He turned back to the mirror. “Mark, do you know where James is right now?”

 

The dark swirly storm-cloud image with the face in it appeared again. “No,” Mark replied.

 

“Can you find her at all?”

 

Mark frowned thoughtfully. “I'll have a look,” he said, and his face disappeared. The storm clouds remained, however. As Richard and Jeremy watched and waited, little fighter jets and supercars flew in and out of the clouds.

 

Richard raised his eyebrow at Jeremy.

 

“Screensaver,” Jeremy shrugged.

 

“Oh.”

 

Finally, Mark reappeared. “She's in a castle at the centre of this forest,” he replied. “She's in the top of a tower. I think somebody's put her into a magic sleep.”

 

“Of course,” Richard sighed.

 

“Your highness,” Mark said, “Why has the princess got a boy's name?”

 

Richard was jolted back to reality again. Memories of Top Gear, which had fallen into the back of his mind, came flooding forward. Supercars, normal cars, silly races pitting small Japanese automobiles against the Ledbury Hunt. James as a man, and his fellow presenter. He sighed. It was very, very easy to forget it all.

 

“Because she's under an enchantment,” Richard said, the explanation flooding into his mind with disturbing ease.

 

“Oh,” Mark replied. “Do you have to undo the enchantment?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Mark,” Jeremy said, “Can you show us a picture of what the country looks like out there? From above, like a map?”

 

An image swirled out of the mist. It was a giant forest. There was a series of roads through it, although Richard wasn't entirely sure he was willing to trust them. Looking closely, he realised that they were all compromised in some way.

 

At the centre of it all was a mountain with a castle on top. Richard was rather worried to see that both the mountain and the castle were made of glass. There didn't seem to be any way up to the thing, either. This, he decided, was going to be very, very tricky.

 

“Well, we'll need climbing gear,” Jeremy said thoughtfully. “Mark, could you please zoom in on this area here?”

 

Mark did as he was asked, and Jeremy started mumbling to himself, making lists of things that they were going to need for this expedition. Richard's jaw dropped. “Aren't you worried about James?” he asked.

 

“Of course I am!” Jeremy replied. “But if we just go charging off with nothing more than a 'Tally Ho' we're not going to get very far.”

 

“What?” Richard asked incredulously.

 

“Well, how long is this going to take?”

 

“Er...”

 

“If it takes more than about half a day, we're going to want to eat. There aren't any shops out there, you know. Not to mention hospitals. Or rescue services. And I'd be astonished if we manage to get through this with nobody getting injured.”

 

“Um...”

 

“Well?”

 

“I think I'll just get out of the way,” Richard said, and, at a loss for something to do, wandered out into the workshop.

 

The scorched part of the forest, he noticed, wasn't growing back. Perhaps there was something about dragon fire that damaged the magic.

 

Thoughts of the magic of the forest distracted him. As a faun, he'd been able to sense the magic, and it had scared him badly. But now, he could sense nothing more than the knowledge that he was going to have to get to the castle as soon as possible to rescue the woman he loved.

 

He stopped himself again. Princess James, he reminded himself. Normally just James. Normally male. Normally your work colleague and friend. Not normally your lover. Or your partner. Or any of that. Just James.

 

It wasn't working. All thoughts, all images, of the man James had once been spiralled away out of his imagination. James May, the man, had vanished as completely out of his mind as Mindy had whilst he'd been a faun. All that was left was the image of the most wonderful woman he'd ever known.


	8. All I Want for Christmas is Normality

Jeremy dumped the last pack into Oliver's boot, and slammed it shut. The whole car shook with the force of the slam, and Oliver beeped his annoyance.

 

“Watch it!” Richard yelped. “He's not a Tonka Toy, you know!”

 

 

 

“No, it's a car.”

 

 

 

“You don't believe that he's really the Stig, do you?” Richard asked flatly.

 

 

 

“No,” Jeremy replied.

 

 

 

Oliver's engine started and he began to roll backwards, forcing Jeremy to jump sideways to avoid him. “Oy!” he protested. “What was that for?”

 

 

 

“Who are you talking to, Jeremy?” Richard mocked. “I'm nowhere near the car.”

 

 

 

Jeremy scowled at him. “Alright!” he said, “Fine! Oliver's got a soul. Happy now?”

 

 

 

Oliver beeped again, mollified.

 

 

 

“Now,” Jeremy said, heading for the driver's side, “Let's get out of here.”

 

 

 

Oliver's two front doors promptly locked themselves.

 

 

 

“I don't think he wants you to drive,” Richard replied, grinning.

 

 

 

“I suppose Oliver will insist that you drive instead, then, Your Highness,” Jeremy said. Firmly, he went to the driver's door, and tried to open it.

 

 

 

It wouldn't budge.

 

 

 

“Oliver is quite capable of driving himself, you know,” Richard said.

 

 

 

Oliver revved his engine, and the two rear doors flew open. Richard and Jeremy looked at eachother. “I guess neither of us will be driving, then,” Richard replied with a sigh. “And please don't call me Highness.”

 

 

 

They clambered in the back, and the doors shut on them, almost trapping Richard's fingers in the door.

 

 

 

“Why not?” Jeremy demanded. “It's what you are right now. You're the annoyingly handsome prince who's off to rescue his fair princess from the ravenous dragon.”

 

 

 

“And that gives you the right to be irritating?”

 

 

 

“Of course,” Jeremy replied smugly. “I'm the comic side kick. I can be as irritating as I want.”

 

 

 

“Remember that when I feed you to the dragon,” Richard sighed. “That's the usual fate of irritating comic sidekicks, if you remember.” He hid his face in his hands. A fairy tale adventure with Jeremy along for comic relief. This did not bode well. It reminded him of all the times when the three of them went on those adventures. It reminded him, in particular, of the real reason why he so readily volunteered to be the one who wasn't in a car. It was, of course, so that he didn't have to stay trapped in a confined space with Jeremy.

 

 

 

James had had her moments of course, but... Thoughts of James derailed his mental process. Something, he felt, was distinctly wrong there. James was a beautiful princess in a flowing white dress (she'd even been known to wear her hair in danishes over her ears occasionally). She didn't go on adventures clad in jeans. It was only with great reluctance that her royal father had let her...

 

 

 

No. It was still wrong. There were stories clashing with memories and realities in his mind, and he couldn't sort them out. The only stable image of James he could summon was the one of her in one of her ridiculously impractical white dresses, with her hair either bound up in some fancy braided manner, or tumbling down over her back. The only first meeting with her that he could actually remember was the one at that party...or was it a grand ball...? The one put on by her father, at any rate. The one where their eyes met across a crowded room, and he'd fallen madly in love with her.

 

 

 

His father had been delighted. No more paternity suits from local merchants annoyed at discovering that the prince had no intention of marrying their daughters. No more dangerously disappointed mothers. No more fending off tearful local merchants' daughters, for that matter.

 

 

 

No.

 

 

 

Wait a minute.

 

 

 

That wasn't right either.

 

 

 

“Jeremy,” Richard said plaintively. “I need a reality check here!”

 

 

 

“Don't we all,” Jeremy grumbled. “You are really Richard Hammond, co-presenter of Top Gear, along with James and myself.”

 

 

 

Richard's eyes glazed over. “James,” he murmured. She'd stood at the top of the marble staircase, making her grand entrance. Her hair and her dress sparkled in the light of the chandeliers. She'd stood there for what seemed like ages, waiting for everybody in the room to get a good look at her. Then, she'd descended, slowly.

 

 

 

He'd waited for her, in the middle of the room. For some reason, and he couldn't really fathom why, she'd come straight to him. The rest of the room had cleared a space, and he was left in the middle of it. Now, he couldn't think why he hadn't moved. He felt as though he'd been rooted to the spot. Then, she stood in front of him. Smiled. As if controlled by somebody else, he'd offered her his hand. Asked her to dance.

 

 

 

She'd agreed. The music floated through the room once more, and they'd danced. They'd gazed into each other's eyes, oblivious to all other people in the room.

 

 

 

He knew that that story probably wasn't the right one, any more than the other versions were correct, but he liked it.

 

 

 

“Oy! Cut it out!” Jeremy snapped. “I thought you wanted a reality check!”

 

 

 

Richard jumped. “Sorry,” he said.

 

 

 

“Oh, this is hopeless,” Jeremy grumbled. “Trying to keep you in touch with reality is pointless. Look, we've got to go and rescue her...him! Bloody hell, Richard, you've got me doing it now... We've got to rescue him from the dragon. Never mind the rest of the bollocks.”

 

 

 

“Right,” Richard said. “Rescue James from the dragon.” He looked forward again. This was worse than being a faun. At least fauns were just horny little fertility spirits with no real concerns or confusion about the gender who they were in love with. But now? Now he was the prince with a princess who was really male, and he was having real problems coping.

 

 

 

The memories the Crack reset had given him were not internally consistent. That was the biggest problem. His memories of the princess varied wildly – memories of her never really leaving the palace warred with memories of the two of them having played together as children, and both conflicted with memories of the two of them having met for the first time in a garage, James with her hair wrapped around her ears to stop from getting oil in it. Which in turn conflicted wildly with his memory of having met her for the first time in a palace.

 

 

 

And none of them seemed quite real. They all seemed to flicker in the face of the coming adventure, where he was to rescue her from the dragon, meet her for the first time, and fall wildly in love with her. In that order.

 

 

 

The conflict made his stomach churn, and he knew that they had to get through it, and quickly. If they left it for too long, he would be physically incapable of doing what he knew had to be done. If they left it for too long, the conflict would probably kill him. Or drive him mad. Or even both.

 

 

 

The road caught his attention. They were about to drive through a small stream.

 

 

 

There was a small splash as they did so. And then, the world started tumbling around them. “Oh, my God, we're breaking up!” he yelped as the car somehow vanished from around them. Fortunately, he hit the ground rolling, and tumbled to a halt some way down the track. Equally fortunately, they hadn't been going very fast at the time.

 

 

 

Richard's head spun for a minute or so before the rest of him stopped. When it did, he took stock.

 

 

 

They had hit a small stream. It was nothing compared to the streams he had himself crossed in assorted vehicles before the Crack had happened. It was nothing, in fact, compared with the stream he'd attempted to cross in Oliver not long after he and the small car had first met, in Africa. The little stream which had just tripped them up should have offered no problems at all. Even to Oliver.

 

 

 

However, he'd distinctly felt the car break up around him, sending the two humans tumbling out into the fresh air. For confirmation was the fact that he was now lying on his side in the mud. The packs Jeremy had prepared also landed somewhere in their vicinity, and it was at that point that Richard realised that Oliver was gone. Vanished. Not a trace of him remained.

 

 

 

What did remain was a vaguely humanoid mass of tentacles with a single conglomerate eye in the front of its head, lying sprawled in the mud not far away.

 

 

 

“Stig?” Richard heard Jeremy say as he got to his feet. “Ow,” Jeremy added.

 

 

 

Richard turned to look. Jeremy was still on the ground. He was, in fact, clutching his legs and stomach. “Jeremy, you're getting bigger again,” he said.

 

 

 

“Well, I hope it takes this time,” Jeremy grumbled.

 

 

 

Richard turned back to Stig, who had got to his feet, folded the two most arm-like masses of tentacles and was standing there, impervious to all. “It's good to see you back in your usual shape again.”

 

 

 

Some of the tentacles around Stig's neck formed a smiley face, which Richard took to mean that Stig was glad to be back in his proper shape again, too. Another tentacle made an obscure gesture at Jeremy.

 

 

 

“You're right,” Jeremy remarked. “I am back to my normal height.”

 

 

 

Richard looked over. Jeremy was standing upright and, Richard noticed, was once again considerably taller than Richard.

 

 

 

“Now, if whatever it is that is doing this would kindly stop mucking about with my height, I for one would be most grateful.”

 

 

 

Richard laughed.

 

 

 

“We'd best get moving,” he said. “We've got to get to the centre of the forest, and the sooner the better.”

 

 

 

Something stroked his hair. Richard turned, to see Stig standing next to him. His tentacles were wearing a bemused expression, and Richard reached up to see what was wrong. Everything seemed normal. “What?” he asked.

 

 

 

“Your hair is still perfect,” Jeremy said.

 

 

 

“Oh,” Richard said. For some reason, that annoyed him. He didn't know why - hair that was not disturbed by helmets should not be disturbed by the sort of tumble that one experienced when one's mode of transport was unexpectedly transformed from a car into a humanoid.

 

 

 

Perhaps it was the combination of perfect hair and the brushed satin outfit he'd been forced to don. He should have stuck with the overalls. It wouldn't have made him look like a complete ponce. And maybe his hair would have behaved like a mechanic's hair, instead of a supermodel's hair.

 

 

 

Having Jeremy and the Stig point his perfect hair out to him did not help matters one little bit.

 

 

 

To cover his growing annoyance, he picked up one of the packs and shouldered it. “Come on. We've got quite a way to go. I hope you packed tents!”


	9. All I Want for Christmas is Normality

Richard could almost feel the story twisting itself around them, trying to fit Jeremy and Stig into the picture.

 

It wasn't having an easy time of it. Stig's alien nature did not fit in well with a fairy tale, and the story itself wasn't prepared for the hero to have retainers on hand. The ever-changing background details swimming through his memories made him think.

 

He now realised that the original fairy tale had not been particularly realistic, and hadn't bothered much with the prince. His own background story wobbled and wavered badly as he strode along, and it was only with difficulty that he managed to hang on to the distant memories of his real life story.

 

He clung to those details with all the strength he could muster. His wife and children (their faces shining like beacons in his mind). The Top Gear studio. The cars. Jeremy and the Stig, both currently, refreshingly, normal – not that the word 'normal' could ever be applied to the Stig, of course.

 

And James.

 

The twisting back story flooded into his mind again, drowning out all else in its confusion.

 

It hurt. The memories, thrashing about in his mind, sent white-hot flashes arcing across his brain and eyes. He stopped, closed his eyes, and clutched his head in an effort to make it stop, but it wouldn't.

 

The pain intensified, and Richard sank to his knees. He thought he might have cried out, but he couldn't be certain.

 

Ballrooms and gardens, horses and servants, all swam across his vision in blurry, twisting dischord. Richard Chamberlain started singing (badly) his distain about 'bride-finding balls' in one ear (and why the hell had he ever brought that movie home for his kids to watch anyway? He wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole if he'd known it would do this to him...) whilst what sounded suspiciously like a Tardis echoed in the other ear. That, he suspected, was the Stig's influence.

 

A pair of hands caught hold of him, and he was pulled against a warm human chest. Tentacles caught at his hands and pulled them firmly down from his ears. Slowly, Jeremy's voice penetrated his consciousness. He wasn't too sure what Jeremy was saying, yet, since Richard Chamberlain was still warbling rather loudly, but he concentrated harder to hear what Jeremy was saying.

 

Not that Jeremy's words mattered too much – the mere fact of his presence was enough to give his tortured memory something to hold onto. He thought about Top Gear. Jeremy and the Bugatti Veyron. The Stig, talking Stars in Reasonably Priced Cars around the track (and remembering the occasionally wild-eyed expressions on their faces when they realised that the Stig really wasn't human). His wife. His daughters.

 

The headache and illusions began to fade, although he could still hear, somewhat disturbingly, the distant ringing of bells. Sleigh bells? He dismissed it. The bells probably weren't real.

 

“Richard?” Jeremy asked gently. “What happened?”

 

“My background story,” Richard said, the fading headache making his voice sound rough. “It isn't stable.”

 

Stig's tentacles formed a guilty expression.

 

“Yeah,” Richard said apologetically. “It doesn't know what to do with you at all. Jeremy either, really.”

 

“Why not?” Jeremy asked. “Princes have retainers, don't they?”

 

“Normally, yeah,” Richard said. “But fairy tale princes don't.”

 

Jeremy pulled away so that Richard could see his frown. “That doesn't make sense,” he replied. “What prince ever goes anywhere without an entourage of some kind? You know – bodyguards and all that.”

 

“That's the problem,” Richard agreed. “Fairy tale princes don't have any of that. Just a horse.”

 

Stig looked puzzled.

 

“I see what you mean,” Jeremy said slowly, clearly remembering some of the fairy stories he'd told to his children over the years. He pulled Richard back against him again, and rubbed Richard's arm absently, almost as if he was comforting one of his own children after a particularly bad nightmare. Richard leaned against him, grateful for the attention. At least for the moment.

 

Stig began to look irritable.

 

“Fairy tales are kids' stories,” Richard told Stig, reluctantly pulling back out of Jeremy's arms. “They don't have much in common with reality.”

 

Stig nodded, and Richard realised that, although he still didn't really understand what was going on, he'd decided to file it under 'weird things humans do.' Possibly to be examined in greater detail later, when they had the time. Probably with James' help, since he had the greatest level of tolerance for those sorts of discussions. And because James was the best of the three of them at communicating with Stig.

 

“Where are those blasted bells coming from?” Jeremy asked.

 

Richard's head snapped around. “I thought I was imagining them!”

 

Stig shook his head. He could hear them, too. He pointed down the track they were still on.

 

Richard got to his feet, hauled Jeremy to his, and peered down the track. There was something approaching. He couldn't see it clearly yet. “What now?” He wondered.

 

Stig, who had the best eyesight of all of them, reared back in surprise and, when the object approaching got close enough for them to distinguish it clearly, they realised why.

 

It was a sleigh, pulled by a team of reindeer. It's driver was a large, but jolly-looking fellow dressed in fur-trimmed red, with an explosively large white beard and a face that was streaming with sweat.

 

“But it's July!” Richard exclaimed, bewildered.

 

“That's probably why he's sweating so much,” Jeremy shrugged.

 

Father Christmas pulled up in front of them. “You're in quite a lot of trouble, young Richard,” he said conversationally. He pulled out a hand towel, and mopped his face with it.

 

“I got that impression,” Richard replied ruefully. “Is there anything I can do about it?”

 

Father Christmas wrung out his hand towel, and quite a lot of sweat dripped out of it. Stig's tentacles formed a concerned expression, and Richard nodded his agreement. “That much sweat isn't good for you,” he said.

 

Father Christmas looked rueful. “I know. But the full rig is rather expected of me.”

 

“We don't mind,” Jeremy said quickly. Visions of an expired Father Christmas were evidently dancing across his imagination, and Richard was having similar thoughts.

 

Father Christmas didn't have to be told twice. With evident relief, he opened his fur-lined jacket to reveal a sweat soaked t-shirt underneath. He tossed the jacket into the sleigh, and his boots quickly followed. As a light breeze flowed past, he sighed with relief. “You have no idea how good that feels,” he said. “As to your situation, Richard, the answer is, unfortunately, no. Whoever built the Crack device that went off here tried to create an alternate reality that worked.”

 

“A reality where fauns and giants were real,” Jeremy said.

 

Father Christmas nodded. “Yes. Unfortunately, whilst such a change is theoretically possible, it cannot be done on a small scale. The entire universe must be changed all at once for it to work.”

 

Richard's jaw dropped, and he knew that the other two were just as surprised. “The entire universe!”

 

“No wonder it didn't work properly,” Jeremy said.

 

Stig made a complicated series of gestures, and Father Christmas nodded his agreement. “Indeed, Stig,” he said. “Their efforts are improving. Their decision to try a spreading effect is a significant step forward for them. It shall still fail, though.”

 

“But what will happen in the meantime?” Richard demanded, his voice rising.

 

Father Christmas looked grave. “They have included certain permutations in their device which allow the Crack to modify if the situation looks as though it is unstable. Eventually, the modifications will fall in line with reality, since that is the most stable state, and the effect will be neutralised. The failures, however, come at a price. That price will be paid by anybody affected by the Crack. In this case, Richard, the Crack must be modified to allow a more stable, workable situation, or it could well be fatal. Particularly for you.”

 

They fell silent.

 

“How long?” Jeremy asked finally.

 

“I don't know,” Father Christmas admitted.

 

“Can you influence it at all?” Jeremy asked.

 

Father Christmas shook his head. “I'm afraid not. My own ability to affect reality is seasonal.”

 

“Seasonal?” Richard asked.

 

“Only during Christmas,” Father Christmas explained.

 

“So, if it was December,” Jeremy said, “We could make a Christmas wish and it would work.”

 

Father Christmas nodded. “I can, however, offer some hope. The technique used to create the Crack device is still flawed, and cannot be activated without the creation of an off-switch.”

 

“So, there's something out there which will undo all this?” Richard asked, brightening.

 

Father Christmas nodded again. “It is usually located at the heart of the affected area.”

 

“Where's the heart?” Richard asked Jeremy, who had studied the maps.

 

Wordlessly, Jeremy pointed at the glass mountain they were headed for.

 

“At least we don't have to turn around,” Richard shrugged.

 

“But how will we recognise the switch when we find it?” Jeremy asked.

 

“I don't know,” Father Christmas shrugged. “Good luck!” He climbed back into his sleigh, and within moments he was gone.

 

They stared after the vanishing sleigh.

 

“What now?” Jeremy asked.

 

Richard shrugged. “Go on with the original notion. I go rescue the princess. Since she's in the glass tower, we can look for the switch whilst we're at it.”

 

Stig touched Richard's head, his tentacles looking worried. Richard shrugged. “We'll just have to hurry. And it really only hurts if I try thinking.”

 

“No change there, then,” Jeremy shrugged. He picked his pack up again, shouldered it, and started down the track.

 

Richard stuck his tongue out at Jeremy's retreating back, picked up his own pack, and started after him, Stig by his side.

 

At the risk of triggering another migrane, Richard pondered the Stig. Some people found him much easier to understand than others did. Jeremy, for instance, was forced to rely quite extensively on the expressions formed by Stig's waving tentacles. His daughter Izzy, however, only had to look at him to know exactly what he was trying to say. She even translated for the rest of them sometimes.

 

Richard had asked her about it once. She had given him a puzzled look and had said, “Of course he speaks! Can't you hear him?”

 

Their conversation had gone nowhere after that.

 

He suddenly found himself wondering if Stig was, in fact, telepathic. If he was, it would explain a thing or two – Jeremy, for one, was apparently completely blind to the thoughts and feelings of others.

 

He must have been on to something, because he felt a wave of what had to be affirmation coming from next to him. It was quickly followed (possibly as a distraction from the implications of that notion) by another image – Father Christmas, sitting in a grotto, with a child on his knee. It was evidently a query.

 

Richard laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “That's the usual thing.”

 

The next image was of Father Christmas, under a calender with the month of July highlighted.

 

Richard frowned. “I don't know what brought him out now,” he replied. “Do you think he might have detected the disturbance?”

 

Stig shrugged, and sent him an image of Father Christmas popping into existence.

 

“Created by the Crack? That would make about as much sense as anything else. He is certainly a mythological figure, and magical enough to hang on in a fairy tale world.”

 

Stig nodded thoughtfully, and gestured again. The image of Father Christmas in the grotto was repeated, this time with Richard on Father Christmas' knee.

 

“Me? Right now, all I want for Christmas is normality,” Richard replied.


	10. All I Want for Christmas is Normality

“I'm not used to walking like this,” Jeremy complained. He had been rubbing his hip surreptitiously for some time now, but there hadn't really been any place where they could stop and give him time to recover.

 

“We can stop, if you'd like,” Richard suggested, but Jeremy shook his head.

 

“If I sit down on the ground, it may be hours before I can get up again,” he replied.

 

“As you wish,” Richard shrugged. “You know, we're almost at the mountain.”

 

“I noticed,” Jeremy said.

 

“And we haven't met anybody since we talked with Father Christmas.”

 

“Were you expecting somebody?” Jeremy enquired.

 

“I was expecting to be attacked by something!” Richard exclaimed. “What sort of fairy tale hero doesn't have any opposition to get through? I'd expected a witch, or at least the dragon, by now!”

 

“The ordinary kind,” Jeremy replied. “Perhaps you need to read your kids the Grimm fairy tales, instead of just letting them watch the Disney versions all the time. The Grimm versions are much shorter, and it's usually the princess who gets all the adventures. The prince just has to show up in the last three paragraphs to fall in love with her and kiss her.”

 

“Great,” Richard grumbled. “I've been reduced to a minor character.”

 

Before he could continue, though, Stig tapped him on the shoulder and pointed behind them. Richard turned to see that there was no sign of the track they'd walked up. In fact, there was no sign of a way out at all. There was nothing but impenetrably thick forest. Richard looked more closely, and realised that the trees and vines even had two-inch long, razor sharp spikes all over them. Now that they were in, they were not going to be getting back out again.

 

“That doesn't look friendly,” Jeremy commented.

 

Richard looked more closely. “It's getting closer,” he said.

 

Jeremy and Stig exchanged glances, and looked at the forest. “You're right,” Jeremy commented.

 

Stig's tentacles made 'walking' gestures, and Jeremy nodded. “Let's keep moving, shall we? The mountain's not too far away now.”

 

They started walking again. Richard noticed that the pause had apparently helped Jeremy a bit, because he wasn't rubbing his hip any more. He wasn't limping, either. Richard didn't imagine that he wouldn't be limping by the time they'd finished, especially given that they still had a mountain to climb, but they would cross that bridge when they got there.

 

What bothered him more was that he couldn't sense the hostility of the forest any more. There was no doubt in his mind that the forest didn't want them in it. Or rather, when he'd still been a faun, there had been no doubt in his mind.

 

He asked Stig if he had sensed any hostility before, and got an image of himself with James in Oliver with the forest squeezing them to death.

 

“But what about now?” Richard asked. “Is the forest still hostile?”

 

Stig shrugged, and sent him an image of the forest chasing them towards the mountain.

 

“It wants us there,” Richard mused. “Why now? Is it because I'm not a faun any more?”

 

Stig nodded, and Richard got a sense that he now belonged in this particular setting.

 

Other images started to surface, although this time from within his imagination. Richard tried to ignore them, but he quickly felt the beginnings of another migraine. The culprit was, of course, an image of Princess James wielding a lightsabre.

 

Desperately, Richard erased the image of the lightsabre from his mental image, leaving only the long, flowing white dress and the hair wound around her ears. It was, apparently, enough to stop things from getting too bad, although not enough to make it go away entirely. He rummaged through his memories, and found a picture of the Disney princesses his daughters loved to watch.

 

The one from Sleeping Beauty seemed to fit the best, and he 'dressed' his imaginary Princess James in that dress.

 

The images faded from his mind, and so did the headache. At least he had some control over them. Perhaps enough to stave off the worst until they'd cancelled the crack. He didn't want to think about what would happen to him if they failed. He really didn't.

 

They walked out of the forest and found themselves standing at the base of the mountain. At that point, he had no problems at all putting Princess James out of his mind – this thing was huge.

 

It was smooth, too. It erupted out of the ground like a giant spike made of glass which had had its end modified into a glass castle.

 

“There is no way known that I am going to be able to get up there,” Jeremy pronounced, pointing up the mountain.

 

“There's no way any of us are going to be able to get up there,” Richard replied, looking up at the thing. If he squinted, he thought he could even see where Princess James had been placed, up in the highest tower.

 

“How the hell are you supposed to live in a place where you can see through all the walls?” Jeremy demanded.

 

The migraine slammed into Richard like a pile-driver. He had a feeling he had screamed, because a few minutes later, after things began to subside and he was capable of being aware of his surroundings again, he was folded in Jeremy's arms, being rocked gently back and forth.

 

But the headache wasn't going away. It rolled back and forth through his brain like a thunderstorm bouncing around in a valley. Dimly, he became aware that Jeremy and Stig were talking.

 

Talking about the way in which fairy tales could not be adapted to reality.

 

“Stop!” He whimpered. “Please, stop talking about it!”

 

Jeremy's eyes widened. “Richard?”

 

“Every time you talk about it, every time I think about it, it kicks off another migraine.”

 

Jeremy and Stig looked at each other, and Stig inserted an image of himself wearing his white overalls and helmet into Richard's mind.

 

More pain blossomed, and Richard curled up.

The image quickly vanished, and gradually, the pain started to subside.

 

“It's getting worse,” Jeremy said sombrely. “If you can't even take that any more!”

 

Richard nodded miserably. “The sooner we get up that mountain and find the reset switch, the better.” He stood up as the pain vanished completely, leaving only its memory behind it. He stretched, and started to feel better again. “Maybe there'll be a way up around the other side,” he suggested.

 

Jeremy nodded, and they started to walk along the base of the mountain. Stig, however, didn't move. His eye was wide, and he was swaying slightly. Jeremy and Richard exchanged glances.

 

“Stig?” Richard asked gently. “Are you alright?”

 

Slowly, Stig shook his head. He started to shake.

 

“The crack is attacking him,” Richard said tersely.

 

“Isn't there anything we can do?”

 

Before anybody could say anything else, though, the world started to twist around them. The spikes on the trees transformed into vines and creepers, the forest itself changed into dense tropical jungle, and the glass mountain with its castle on top transformed into a high-tech plascrete fortress.

 

Richard could feel his long hair shrinking, and his clothes twisting around him. Although his scalp was tingling strangely, the change was not painful. It was probably because he didn't actually have to shape-shift this time. It felt as though he was staying human.

 

Except for a strange sort of buzzing feeling in the back of his mind. Something had changed in his brain.

 

He decided not to think about it for a while. It would reveal itself to him at the proper moment, he was sure of it. He looked over to where Stig was standing, and noticed that the alien was looking startled, but much more comfortable.

 

Stig's outfit had changed from the peasant smock and breeches he'd been wearing since he'd been returned to his usual form, to a jumpsuit which more closely resembled his racing overalls. The jumpsuit was white, with an insignia on its breast and what were probably rank markings on his sleeve. His feet were booted, and he had a utility belt around his waist. At his hip was a blaster. His tentacles draped comfortably around his neck like a collar. As Richard watched, Stig wrapped and re-wrapped his tentacles around his neck, much like he had them when he was wearing overalls and a helmet.

 

Richard looked over at Jeremy.

 

Jeremy's clothing had also changed to a white jumpsuit with insignia and rank markings. Jeremy had more rank markings on him than Stig did, and Richard suspected that he was probably their commander. Jeremy, however, had also gained a peculiar looking apparatus which sat on his head like a hat, and covered his eyes with a transparent visor. As Richard watched, he raised his hand to touch it curiously.

 

Richard looked down at himself. Like the other two, he was wearing a white jumpsuit with insignia and rankings. At his hip, however, he had not only a blaster, but a short silver rod which he just knew was a lightsabre. He grinned, pulled it out of its holster, and touched the only button on it.

 

Sure enough, a blade made of light shot up from its interior, and the weapon hummed dangerously. “Behold the Power of the Force!” he intoned.

 

“How come you get the lightsabre?” Jeremy whined.

 

Richard laughed at him. “Because I get to be the Jedi. Anyway, you get to be captain, so I don't see what you're complaining about. Plus, none of us have to have headaches anymore.”

 

Stig nodded his agreement, and pointed along the wall.

 

“Yeah,” Jeremy said to Stig. “We still have to rescue Princess Leia. I mean, James.”

 

“And find a reset switch to get back to normal.”

 

“Actually,” Jeremy said, “I think I rather like this version of reality.”

 

As if to remind him that they had been given weapons for a reason, there was a peculiar whine, and a green ray of light created an explosive dent in the wall between them.

 

“You were saying?” Richard asked pleasantly.

 

“Run!” Jeremy yelped, and they pelted away along the wall of the fortress.

 

“Stop them!” bellowed a voice behind them.

 

Richard pulled out his lightsabre and, without thinking about it, used it to deflect a couple of bolts. He grinned.

 

“They're shooting at us!” Jeremy yelled as he ran. “What are they doing that for?”

 

“Because we're the good guys and they're the bad guys?” Richard suggested, deflecting more blasts.

 

“But what did we do to them?”

“Can we talk about it later?” Richard asked. “When we aren't running?”

 

“Good point,” Jeremy agreed, and shut up.

 

They rounded a corner, and promptly fell into a hole in the ground. Richard found himself sliding down a chute. “What the hell?” he wondered, as he stared down the chute.

 

The chute twisted and turned ahead of them, not that he could see past Jeremy and Stig anyway. And it was dark.

 

“Who the hell puts a slippery chute outside a fortress?” Jeremy asked. “Who created this? Who the hell is responsible? When I get my hands on the people who created that crack bomb, there are going to be tears.”

 

Richard laughed. “What's the matter?” he asked. “Not having fun any more?”

 

“No,” Jeremy growled.

 

Richard heard a noise behind them, and realised that something had entered the chute behind them. But what? He opened his mind, and realised that something very large, very heavy, and totally inanimate, had been shoved into the chute. “When we get to the bottom,” he shouted down to the others, “we need to get out of the way really, really quickly.”

 

“Understood!” Jeremy shouted back, and Richard got a glimpse of a waved tentacle.

 

The warning came barely in time. Moments later, all three of them were tumbling out of the chute and scrambling out of the way of the enormous segments of tree trunk that had been shoved down after them.

 

Richard looked around. The room they had landed in was featureless, apart from the lumps of wood scattered about in it, and a large door set in one wall. They had obviously landed in a storage bay beneath the fortress.

 

“Not very secure, is it?” Jeremy commented.

 

“No,” Richard agreed, and felt a wave of query relating to wood coming from Stig. “I don't know,” Richard told him. “Somebody must have an open fireplace.”

 

Stig shrugged, and turned to open the door.


	11. All I Want for Christmas is Normality

The place was, apparently, deserted. Richard could not hear any signs of life, apart from the periodic crashing of wood falling down the chute they had entered by.

 

“Who gathers the wood?” Jeremy asked. “Where are the people?”

 

Stig inserted an image of complicated machinery into Richard's mind, and he nodded. “Yes,” he agreed. “This place probably does have robots for that. Especially if we're doing Star Wars.”

 

Jeremy frowned thoughtfully. “We should be looking for a way up, then,” he said. “I don't think James is down here anywhere.”

 

Richard nodded. Something odd was tickling the back of his awareness, but he couldn't quite figure out what was bothering him. It was very faint. He shrugged it off. It would make itself known to him in its own good time.

 

As they wandered along, however, he noticed something. “This level wasn't built for people,” he said. “There are no rooms.”

 

“So why is there lighting?” Jeremy asked curiously. “Surely robots wouldn't need light to find their way around!”

 

“Maybe their sensors work best when they have light to see by,” Richard suggested. “Those lights look a bit like it's been jury-rigged.”

 

Jeremy frowned up at them thoughtfully. He nodded. “You have a point,” he said. “They're kind of like a high-tech version of bunker lights.”

 

A wave of negation came from Stig, followed by an image of the fortress. Jeremy must have picked up on this one himself, because he nodded without any translations required. “Yes,” he agreed. “A fortress is not the same as a bunker.”

 

Richard waited for James to comment about the common sense of having bunkers in fortresses, especially during wartime. It didn't come, and Richard remembered all over again that James was the one they were trying to find. He slumped slightly, and sighed.

 

“What's up?” Jeremy asked.

 

“I miss James,” Richard admitted. “I thought he'd give us this long, boring lecture about bunkers and fortresses in wartime for a moment there.”

 

“She's around here somewhere,” Jeremy reassured him. “Probably further up. We'll find her.”

 

Richard gave him a tight smile. “Yeah. We'll find her.” He stared straight ahead. For the first time since this whole adventure had begun, Richard felt as though his missing James was the work of his own emotions, rather than being something that some half-crazed, power-mad storyteller had imposed on him because it somehow fit the story better for him to lust after James.

 

For the first time, also, the mysterious non-existence of his wife and daughters didn't hurt. He was going to be very glad to see them again, but he was also particularly grateful that they weren't mixed up in the whole mess.

 

An image of himself with his wife, daughters, and James, all sitting around an open fireplace in a cosy little room crept into his mind, and he couldn't quite figure out whether to laugh or cry. It was an unrealistic notion at best, given that his treacherous memory still preferred to remember James as the woman she now was, rather as than the man she had been.

 

He could very well imagine what Mindy might have to say on the notion of sharing him with James.

 

He started again – James had always been a mate, and nothing more, regardless of what the lunatics who created these crack bombs liked to think. So why was it that the moment James was female, he suddenly wanted more? He'd never done that before.

 

Except on those drunken nights in hotel rooms, of course, when he wanted nothing more than to get James into bed so that they could shag each other senseless. But that was always just the alcohol talking. And he'd never wanted to set up house with him. He'd never actually been in love with the man. So why had he fallen in love with the woman?

 

Quickly, he banished the image. This was not the time to be woolgathering. There was no telling what was lurking in this fortress, and given that there were people outside who wanted to kill them made him wonder just what the inhabitants of the fortress thought about them.

 

“Stairs,” Jeremy said, pointing ahead.

 

They nodded, and headed for them. Just as they turned into the stairwell, however, they heard voices behind them. “The sensors said there were people on this level. Two Humans and a Squid. They should be here somewhere!”

 

“They're called Saurians, Corporal, not Squids,” a second voice said sternly. “Squid is a derogatory nickname, and if I hear you use it again you will be doing double shifts in the swamp for a month. And tell your mates that that goes for them, too.”

 

“But sir! They are aligned with the Rebellion! They are the enemy!”

 

“They are a highly advanced race!” the second voice barked. “They have sound military knowledge, and are worthy of respect, regardless of their political choices! If you treat all your enemies as inferiors, Corporal, they will surely defeat you.”

 

“Yes, Captain,” the Corporal said sullenly.

 

Richard pointed up the stairs, and they started moving again, as quietly as possible. He was terrified that their boot heels would be loud against the hard flooring. Either their boots, or the flooring, however, had been designed to be quiet, and they escaped from their pursuers with ease.

 

Not for the first time, Richard wondered who precisely had designed the place, and what they'd had in mind. There were side corridors everywhere – the place was like a rabbit warren, and it would be very easy for somebody who was vigilant to keep out of sight of pursuers.

 

Jeremy tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed towards an open doorway. Inside, Richard saw a long room with a conference table in it. Through the doorway, he could see another door, which was fortunately closed.

 

Straining with every sense he could muster, Richard tried to determine if anybody was in there. He couldn't sense anybody at all, and carefully he poked his head into the room for another look. It was empty, and the three of them ducked inside. Stig waved a tentacle over a sensor plate by the door, and it slid silently shut.

 

“You know,” Jeremy said thoughtfully, “We may be concentrating on the wrong thing right now.”

 

“What do you mean?” Richard asked.

 

“Perhaps we should be trying to find a way to undo the crack – find that switch Father Christmas mentioned – instead of rescuing James. If we undo all this, then we'll get James back by default.”

 

Stig nodded his agreement, but Richard, somehow, knew that they were wrong.

 

“No,” Richard replied. “The switch is with James. Don't ask me why, or how I know. It just is. If we find James, we'll find the switch as well.”

 

Jeremy gave him a sour look. “Your Jedi senses again?”

 

Richard sighed. “Must be,” he said. “I just know, somehow, that that's the way we need to do it.”

 

That sensation tickled at the back of his mind again, and for some reason, it seemed clearer this time. Curiously, he concentrated on it. An image swam into his mind. An image of James, dressed up like Princess Leia again, on a dais in the centre of an enormous chamber. She was standing in a cage barely large enough for her to stand in, and he knew instantly that the moment she touched the cage, she would die.

 

He also knew that she was getting tired.

 

Dread filled his mind and settled down into the pit of his stomach.

 

“We have to find her,” he said to the others, “She's in dreadful danger!” Without waiting for them, he surged to his feet and headed for the door.

 

It took the other two a moment to realise what was going on, but they were soon hot on his heels. They pelted down corridors, around corners, and up stairways, periodically skidding to a halt and going back in the other direction as Richard realised that he was going the wrong way, or was about to run into another band of soldiers.

 

Richard himself only knew that some directions were proper and some weren't, frequently not knowing that he was going the wrong way until he was part way down a corridor.

 

A brief image flashed into his mind, from Stig. Princess James, wielding a light sabre. It must have been in response to an unvoiced query from a badly winded Jeremy, although what the initial query question had been escaped him.

 

His danger sense flared, and he skidded to a halt. The others barely avoided crashing into him. Jeremy shot him an enquiring glance, too badly winded to speak coherently.

 

“Soldiers,” Richard said tersely. “They've cut us off.”

 

“How...” Jeremy wheezed.

 

Richard glanced around – it was the work of a moment to spot the security cameras monitoring them. He shrugged them off. “We haven't got time to worry about that,” he said, and went to start running down the corridor again.

 

Stig grabbed his arm before he could get more than two steps however, and shook his head. Richard received an image of the three of them running down a corridor into an ambush followed by an image of Princess James dying horribly.

 

Richard jumped at the violence of the image, and sensed a complex blend of emotions from Stig that Richard interpreted as being irritation at not being able to speak to them using language that they properly understood, and regret at having to send him something so horrible.

 

“It's okay,” Richard reassured him. “It got the message across.”

“What message?” Jeremy asked crossly.

 

“That charging blindly into an ambush is a really bad idea and won't do James any good at all.”

 

“True,” Jeremy agreed. He touched the side of his headpiece, and Richard realised with a jolt that he still wasn't entirely sure what exactly it did. He scanned the walls for a moment, and then stopped. “Slice a hole in that section of wall for me, would you?” he asked, and Richard obliged.

 

On the other side of the hole was a motley collection of multi-coloured wires twisting around a collection of grey tubes. “What are they for?” Richard asked.

 

“According to my computer,” Jeremy replied, “They hold the largest electric currents that I've managed to see so far. I think one of them is the main power conduit for the fortress.”

 

Richard grinned. “Got any explosives?” he asked.

 

Stig pulled something small and flat out of a hidden pouch, and laid it carefully against the conduit. He fiddled with it for a moment, and then started to run. He must have planted a command into their minds, too, because they were both running after him before either of them had caught up with events.

 

They pelted down corridors at random, away from the place where Stig had planted the explosives, and away from people. Richard, with his Jedi-enhanced senses and reactions, was soon in the lead once more. They were headed away from where they really needed to be going, and he could feel the presence that was James in the back of his mind beginning to fade.

 

It was, however, unavoidable. In fact, the resultant chaos and power-disruption, James was sure to be able to free herself, and could take steps to find them.

 

Richard realised that nobody else was in the vicinity, and stopped running. Jeremy and Stig, by this stage both wheezing, slumped against the walls of the corridor to try and get their breaths back.

 

“Are we far enough away?” Richard asked Stig, who simply nodded his reply. “Good,” he said, and sat down next to them.

 

He realised at that moment that his calf-muscles were burning, and that he was, despite everything, breathing a little more heavily than usual. He cast his mind back over the route they'd followed, and realised with some surprise that they had come a considerable distance.

 

“How,” Jeremy wheezed, “come you....aren't....win...winded?”

 

Richard shrugged. “I'm fit,” he replied simply.

 

Jeremy shot him a dirty look.

 

“Seriously,” Richard replied, “If you ran five kilometers every morning, you'd be able to do this easily.”

 

Jeremy glowered at him. “Running that far every day would kill me,” he replied, once he felt able to talk without pausing.

 

“Not if you kept doing it,” Richard said.

 

In the distance, there was a muffled 'boom', closely followed by a shock wave. They reeled back from it, and the lights went out leaving them in darkness.

 

Richard stretched out with his mind, trying to find James. They'd come quite a long way in their rush to escape from the explosion, and it was difficult. But the room she'd been held in had, apparently, been shielded from explosions and so she'd been safe.

 

At that moment, he realised what a tremendous risk they'd just taken, and he reeled back again. “We could have killed her!” he exclaimed. “We could have...” He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. It wasn't enough, so he followed it with one of the mental exercises his Jedi Master had given him for just such an occasion.

 

He didn't normally agree with the Jedi path of keeping one's emotions switched off, but he had to admit that the techniques they used to promote that state were useful on occasion. Especially when it came to his desire to protect the woman he loved.

 

“Stig tells me that the room she was in is shielded,” Jeremy said, and Richard opened his eyes again.

 

The corridor, instead of being black, was now a dark red in colour, and Richard realised that the emergency lighting had come on.

 

“How did he know?” Richard asked.

 

Stig tapped his forehead, and pointed at Richard.

 

“Eh?” Jeremy asked.

 

“He means that he saw it in my mind,” Richard translated, “Although goodness only knows how I knew.” He got to his feet. “Come on,” he said. “We need to get moving and find her before...” He stopped.

 

“What's wrong?” Jeremy asked.

 

Richard stared at him. “I love her,” he replied in wonder.


	12. All I Want for Christmas is Normality

The others stared at him. “No really?” Jeremy said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “You mean we've been watching you preparing to fight a dragon with nothing but a rapier because you thought you might miss James' lightning wit?”

 

Stig merely raised his eye skyward, not bothering to attempt to tell him anything.

 

“Come on, you pillock,” Jeremy added, seeing that Stig wasn't going to communicate. “We need to find her.” He headed down the corridor, one hand to his visor, looking for goodness only knows what, without waiting for the others.

 

Stig and Richard trailed after him. Richard could feel the concern radiating from Jeremy as he lead the way down the corridor, and more than a touch of confusion coming from Stig. Stig fired a somewhat complex image at him which amounted to asking Richard what Jeremy was so worried about.

 

“The main problem,” Richard explained, “Is that any personal relationship between James and I would cause trouble. It would disrupt the show, and my marriage.”

 

Richard interpreted Stig's response to mean, “more than it does already?”

 

“Well, maybe,” Richard conceded ruefully. “Mindy's always been very tolerant of it all, far more than I'd ever expected, or deserved. But this would be going too far, even for her.”

 

Jeremy's level of concern abated somewhat as he overheard Richard's explanation and realised that he wasn't about to do anything stupid. Or stupider than normal, Richard silently admitted to himself. Jeremy turned, and gestured for silence. Richard strained his senses, and detected a patrol coming in their direction. Quickly, they ducked into a doorway and waited for the patrol to canter past. They were headed in the direction of the explosion, and Richard sensed that they intended to search outward from that point for intruders.

 

He located that tickle at the back of his mind again, and realised that they were now closer to James than he had realised. In fact, she'd been moved. He pointed down the corridor in the direction that the patrol come from and headed down there.

 

They soon located the room that James had been moved to – it looked like a secondary control centre, and as they peered cautiously through the door, they noticed that James was now seated, with a couple of guards aiming weapons directly at her.

 

Seated in a throne-like chair on a raised platform at the opposite end of the room was James' captor. It was a figure of indeterminate gender who was swathed in dark red and black bejewelled robes that must have weighed a ton. The figure's defining feature, however, was his mask. It was a black diamond-back racing helmet, very similar to the one that Black!Stig had worn. It had, however, a couple of additions to it that reminded Richard of just what had lead to Black!Stig's removal in the first place.

 

The helmet had had dark jewels stuck to it, making it glitter strangely under the room's emergency lighting. The addition that really stood out, however, was the golden crown that had been attached to the top of it.

 

Richard could feel waves of shock radiating from Stig, and disbelief that his old enemy was free once more, and that was enough for Richard to realise that this was indeed Black!Stig, rather than somebody who had simply dressed to look like him.

 

Richard put a hand on Stig's arm and tried to calm him down, but the waves of emotion radiating from Stig were too strong to be contained, by either of them. Richard knew that it was only a matter of time before they were spotted. Even as he battled to contain the waves of emotion, Richard could feel a jolt from Black!Stig and knew that they had been detected.

 

Black!Stig had always been an arrogant bastard, and towards the end of the show's second season had got even worse. Finally, during the filming of the second last episode of the season, White!Stig had appeared.

 

The car chase that ensued went into the annals of local history, even though only parts of it were filmed by the Top Gear crew, and none of it had ever been broadcast. And, at the end of it all, White!Stig had won. The pair of them had got out of the cars, and Black!Stig had somehow let it be known that White!Stig would be replacing him.

 

It had been the work of a moment to decide that Black!Stig needed a send off of some kind. Regardless of his somewhat unpleasant personality, he had been a member of the team, and deserved to be properly farewelled. Fortunately, White!Stig and the enforcers who had arrived soon after agreed to let them film one last episode together.

 

Now, it seemed, Black!Stig was back.

 

Reluctantly, Richard tore his eyes away from Black!Stig and returned to James. She was clearly very tired, so tired that she was swaying slightly in her chair, and Richard wondered if perhaps the sleep spell she'd been under previously was still hanging around somehow.

 

Black!Stig's helmet slowly turned, and looked in their direction. Time seemed to slow for Richard. White!Stig let out a mental bellow of anger that reverberated through Richard's brain, and launched himself in Black!Stig's direction. Jeremy fell over backwards. Richard lit his lightsabre and launched himself at the two guards aiming their weapons at James.

 

James, despite her exhaustion, was not out of the fight. As the guard standing behind her raised his weapon to shoot her, she tipped her chair backwards and knocked him over. The other guard was left staring stupidly at his fallen comrade for a vital couple of seconds before what he was viewing sunk in, and that was all the time it took for Richard to arrive and slice his gun in half.

 

The guard looked stupidly at his destroyed weapon, and Richard landed a punch on his jaw that left him unconscious. He turned to the other guard, who was just getting to his feet, and kicked him in the jaw. The other guard joined his friend in unconsciousness, and that was the end of it.

 

Richard glanced at the door, and noticed Jeremy standing there, exchanging blaster fire with more guards. Evidently, Black!Stig had sent all the competent guards out to find the trio, not expecting them to evade the squads so easily.

 

“Can't concentrate,” James murmured woozily.

 

Richard helped her to her feet, and she leaned on him.

 

Behind them, there was a crash, which made them both jump. They spun around, and realised that Black!Stig had lost his fight with White!Stig, and White!Stig had just knocked him out. Richard felt James getting heavy, and it was only thanks to his Jedi-enhanced reflexes that he managed to lay her out comfortably on the floor before she fell over.

 

White!Stig brushed past them both as he went to join Jeremy at the door, and Richard turned his attention back to James. It was going to be up to him alone to figure out how to reverse what had been done to her.

 

He placed his palm on her forehead, and probed her body with his mind, trying to figure out what had been done to her. He found nothing. There were no hints there at all to indicate what Black!Stig had done, or even that he'd done anything at all.

 

He scanned her body again, this time looking for evidence of drugs, or a damaging stun blast. Once again, he found nothing. No evidence whatsoever that anything had been done about it.

 

Frustrated, he leaned back on his heels and thought about it some more. Black!Stig, of course, was the same race as White!Stig, and they both had abilities that were beyond the understanding of mere human beings. In fact, there were times when Richard wondered if the Crack bombs had not, in fact, originally come from Stig's world.

 

If they had – and Stig had always denied that the Crack bombs they had found around the Top Gear studios before were made by his people, even though he had admitted that they probably originated from his world – perhaps they had found a way of stabilizing them. Perhaps James' condition was in fact a hangover from the fairy tale they had tried to make their way through before.

 

“Hurry up!” Jeremy bellowed. “We're running out of time here!”

 

Richard glanced over at them, and knew that the power packs on both their blasters were running dangerously low. He looked back down at James. If this was a hangover from a fairy tale, then there was only one thing that would work.

 

He leaned down, and gently kissed her lips.

 

Moments later, her arms snaked up around him, and pulled him down on top of her. To say that he was unprepared for her enthusastic response was to put it mildly. His brain short-circuited for a couple of seconds, and when he finally did manage to pull it back on track again, her lips parted beneath his, deepening the kiss. Automatically, he slipped his tongue into her mouth, and completely lost track of what was going on around them.

 

Somewhere in the middle of it all, he was vaguely aware that her shape was changing beneath him. When his hand ran up her side to cup a breast, he found nothing that did not belong on a perfectly normal male chest.

 

The significance of that didn't sink in for quite some time, because at that moment, James tangled his fingers in Richard's hair, and started doing something truly distracting with his other hand. In fact, it wasn't until Jeremy pointedly cleared his throat above them that Richard pushed himself up off James' chest, ending the kiss.

 

They stared at eachother for a long moment before Richard rolled off James and got to his feet, painfully aware of the tightness in what were now his jeans again. “You're male again,” he said finally.

 

“Yes,” James agreed, standing up and pulling his sweater down in a somewhat vain attempt to hide his own hard-on. “Pity really – I was starting to get used to it.”

 

“It's probably for the best, though,” Richard said, desperately willing his body to behave itself. They couldn't blame booze, tiredness, and a hotel room this time.

 

Richard could see from the expression on his face that James knew what he was thinking, and agreed. He could also see a desperation in his friend's eyes, and Richard wondered at it a little. James nodded, and turned to look around. “We seem to be back to normal,” he commented.

 

“Yes,” Jeremy agreed. “And it only took two days.”

“Is that all?” Richard said in disbelief.

 

Jeremy nodded. “Alan's steaming about the two filming days we lost, and about how he's going to hit the BBC for higher levels of security.”

 

“I wonder what sort of explanation he's going to give them,” James said.

 

“I'll leave that to him to figure out,” Jeremy laughed.

 

They turned to see Stig standing over his black-clad predecessor. “He wasn't very good at it, you know,” James commented, and Stig indicated his agreement.

 

“Good at what?” Richard asked.

 

“Being an evil overlord,” James explained. “His guards were completely inept. Come to that, his fortress design was pretty bad, too – I mean, he left a path into the place, guarded by nothing more than easily dodged falling tree trunks!”

 

“True,” Jeremy agreed. “Now then, what are you two planning to do next?”

 

Richard and James looked at each other. “About what?”

 

“You two got cast as the romantic leads in that little adventure,” Jeremy hinted.

 

“Subtle,” Richard said, rolling his eyes.

 

“Come back to my place?” James suggested. “We can talk about it back there.”

 

“We're back to normal,” Richard replied guiltily. “What's to talk about?”

 

“Well personally,” James said, “I'd like to screw you until you can't walk straight. How's that for a starter?”

 

Richard's jaw dropped. “How long has that been developing?” he asked.

 

“Since I got cast as Sleeping Beauty, of course,” James said. His hands twitched and fluttered restlessly by his sides as he shot Richard another hungry look. “When did you think it would develop?”

 

Richard and Jeremy exchanged bemused looks as Richard attempted to ignore the expression on James' face. “Would you care to explain that at all?” Jeremy asked with exaggerated patience.

 

“What do you mean?” James asked, frowning.

 

Richard took a deep breath, held it for several seconds, and let it out again. “Why would being cast as Sleeping Beauty affect your sex drive?” he asked plainly.

 

James looked startled. “It's a coming-of-age story,” he said. “It's all about sexual awakening. Didn't you know?”

 

“That's it,” Richard said. “I'm never letting my girls having anything to do with fairy tales ever again!”


End file.
